Category: BMW

They might be a bit late off the mark, but BMW Australia has just released local images and details of the awesome 1 Series M Coupé. We know how good the baby M is, too, thanks to filing two reviews of the 1M already: first on its own back in June, then against an M3 and Cayman R in late July.

As expected, BMW has confirmed the initial Australian allocation of 100 1Ms have already been sold. However, they bring the welcome news that a hoped for extra allocation of 100 cars has been now been secured. That means Australia will have up to 200 1 Series M Coupés arriving on our shores. Not bad when you consider the UK allocation was only 450. Thanks BMW Australia!

If you’ve got a spare $100K burning a hole in your pocket and you thought you had already missed out on a 1M, then get on to your BMW dealer right now.

Regular readers will be well aware we have covered the 1M extensively so you’ll all know about the well-proven M3 goodies beneath the skin and the smooth delights of the silky 250kW 3.0 inline twin-turbo, among other joys.

We encourage you to read on and check out the excellent images supplied by BMW Australia—even the Valenica Orange hero colour is starting to gain our favour now—and there’s also plenty of meat and three veg in the form of two press releases. The first you can read below, the other is the full detailed Australian Press Kit which is available for download, thanks to us here at AUSmotive.

BMW USA has released this video of the new BMW M5 on track around the Laguna Seca raceway in California. The video and audio rarely match and, given the location, it’s perhaps not the most exciting result you could think of. But, it’s an M5 on a track, so we think that makes it worth watching!

Just days after an undisguised F30 saloon was spotted the next-gen BMW 3 Series Touring (F31) has been spied in familiar swirly camouflage. Due to go on sale in Europe a bit over 12 months from now the new 3 Series wagon promises to be the largest and most spacious iteration yet.

Styling will obviously follow on from the sedan and these spy shots, showing a longer roofline and larger rear doors, indicate BMW has placed a higher priority on cargo space. Ensuring access to the rear storage area is nice and convenient the split rear tailgate will carry over from the E90 Touring.

[Source: Car]

According to UK publication Autocar the next-gen BMW M3 will feature a 3.0 litre six cylinder engine with twin-turbochargers. It had previously been expected the new M3 motor would have an innovative tri-turbo setup.

The report says the M3’s new engine will be a new unit that is significantly different from the current N54 and N55 twin-turbo engines, incorporating new internals, intake system and ECU.

Peak power for the F32M is still expected to be around 450hp. The new engine, in a lesser state of tune, will also be used in the replacement for the 1 Series M Coupé (expected to wear an M2 badge).

[Source: Autocar]

In recent days the intriguing tale of an abandoned BMW dealership in Canada has been making its way around the globe. The story goes Citation Motors in Oakville, Ontario was discarded in 1988 after the dealership was stripped of its license.

It’s unknown why the dealership lost its rights, but the man behind it moved on and opened another car yard called Downtown BMW in Toronto. This business ran until its closure in 2002.

Back to Ontario, then, and the dealership has remained as it was left 23 years ago. It’s an amazing scene with a 635csi taking pride of place on the showroom floor. The workshop rests apparently untouched, as well.

It’s believed the owner is a wealthy German businessman who had no reason or desire to sell up the former business and its stock; leaving us with a museum by happenstance.

[Source: Endras BMW]

Photos of an undisguised BMW F30 3 Series sedan have emerged from a recent photo shoot in Spain. The somewhat blurry images give us the first proper look at the next-gen 3er.

The new 3 Series will enter production in November this year and BMW will reveal details of their new volume seller around the same time. Sales for the F30 saloon will commence in March 2012 and will be launched at the Geneva Motor Show.

It’s expected BMW will start with 328i and 335i model designations featuring four cylinder turbo and twin-turbo six cylinder engines respectively. It also looks as though the Urban and Sport lines, or something similar, will be introduced as we have seen with the new F20 1 Series.

While this image isn’t great, you can get a sense that the new car has evolved in line with BMW’s latest design language. A head-up display can be seen forward of the main dash cowling as well as a full tan/beige interior, which is a move away from recent schemes that have been a mix of light and dark.

You can see a few more images by following the source link below.

[Source: F30post]

If you know your BMW nomenclature then a car badged as an ‘M550dX’ will most likely make you stop in your tracks and ask, “Would they really do that?”

The ‘M’ means go fast, of course. In the good old days ‘550’ would have told you the model was a 5 Series powered by a 5.0 litre engine. Today, all it tells you is it will be a model close to the top of the 5 Series tree.

Now, here’s where it starts to get interesting: ‘d’ indicates the car is diesel powered and ‘X’ tells you that power is delivered to all four wheels.

So what are we left with? An all-wheel drive, diesel powered M5 in effect.

This is the hot tip as we near the Frankfurt Motor Show. At the very least we’ll be seeing the first of BMW’s tri-turbo madness when they bolt three turbochargers to a six clyinder diesel engine in time for the show.

The all-wheel drive M5 rumour has been around for a while now. But a diesel M5: would they really do that?

[Source: Autoblog]

This is a prototype model of the next BMW M3. While the test mule is a four-door sedan it’s understood the next M3 will be offered initially a traditional two-door coupé layout only. Slow sales of the current M3 sedan have made BMW think twice about repeating the experiment. It’s not been scrapped officially as best we can tell, but perhaps the next time we see four doors on an M3 it might be a fancy ‘coupé’ body style.

However, it’s so early in the development cycle that BMW doesn’t even have an F32 coupé mule to test with. Part of the reason for starting to push the M3 prematurely is the fact it looks likely it will be powered by a tri-turbo engine. That’s right, three turbochargers. Starting to look a bit like men’s razors where marketing teams add more and more blades by the day.

The base engine will be the familiar N5x 3.0 litre six cylinder twin-turbo, but in this more extreme state of tune, with the third turbo to be electrically powered, power numbers as high as 335kW (450hp) are being touted. That’s an impressive 85kW (115hp) increase on the numbers produced by the awesome 1M.

We thank F30post for the image and we recommend you follow the source link below for lots more.

[Source: F30post]

A little while back BMW held a special event at its Nürburgring test centre to offer a closer look at its new V8-powered M5. Luckily for those of us who weren’t there, BMW allowed filming and photography. After the break you’ll see three videos from the preview.

Doing the talking are Albert Biermann, Head of BMW M engineering, and Bernd Limmer, engineer and test driver at M. Two pretty good hosts that know this car inside out.

The quality of the clips, especially the audio, is not fantastic, but for a first hand account of Munich’s new über saloon they will certainly satisfy your inner anorak.

[Source: BMWblog via Autoblog]

After having two drives of the BMW 1M we can safely say we are big fans of the car. We know lots of you are fans, as well. BMW Australia is keen to try and secure more cars for local sale, but so far nothing has been confirmed. For now, if you don’t have a confirmed order, you’ll just have to make do with a few pics from Facebook.

With the introduction of the new 5 Series and 1 Series model lines from BMW we’re seeing more examples of their new codename structure. Gone are the familiar model codes with an E prefix and in are codes starting with F.

The new 5er carries an F10 codename, while the new 1er is known as the F20. Although, it was the F01 7 Series that was the first to wear Fxx coding back in 2008.

BMW codenames aren’t the easiest things to remember at the best of times, so after the break there’s a full list of what we have seen and what we know is coming. It will be a very handy reference for the future, so make sure you file this entry away somewhere handy.

[Source: Car]