Auto and Cars

TEST DRIVE: 2020 BMW X6 M50i — Style Doesn’t Need to Make Sense Personally, I’ve never been a fan of SUV “Coupes”. Just the idea of them has never really appealed to me and I feel as if they’re inherently compromised, both as an SUV and as a sports car. Chopping off the roof to add style makes it less practical, thus defeating the entire purpose of buying an SUV. Yet trying to make it sporty still doesn’t work because it’s a massive SUV that still won’t handle well. All the while, it just becomes an odd looking ‘Tweener that doesn’t really have a real place in the world. Yet after spending a week in the BMW X6 M50i, I realized that maybe none of that actually matters. As I picked up my Manhattan Green X6 M50i test car, the Big Bimmer...

Let the Horsepower War End and and the Lightweight War Begin I remember when I used to read old Motor Trend magazines as a young teenager, from my quite retreat (toilet), and supercars were all just starting to crest the 500 horsepower mark. That seemed to be the number for a properly psychotic supercar — 500 hp. Now, that same 500 hp that I used to think was only reserved for the most exotic of supercars is now available in middling sports sedans. Back in my Motor Trend magazine days, the BMW M3 had 333 hp. Now, this next-generation of M3 will crest that formerly magical 500 hp mark, which would have blown my fifteen-year-old mind. That’s progress, though, isn’t it? As engine technology gets better, turbocharging becomes cheaper and expectations get higher, horsepower...

Video: BMW M2 Competition vs A45 AMG, Audi RS3 and Golf R drag race Since BMW hasn’t launched – and doesn’t plan to – a more powerful car than the M135i xDrive in the 1 Series range, the Bavarian manufacturer is missing a hot hatch to throw against the likes of the Mercedes-AMG A45 or the Audi RS3. Therefore, that job might fall onto the BMW M2 Competition, a car that’s not a hatchback but a Coupe and yet has the power and the credentials to keep the fight interesting. The guys from CarWow joined forces with Joe Achilles and put together a drag race with all these cars and a Golf R for some reason. To be fair, the Golf is considerably cheaper than the other cars here and doesn’t lag that far behind but we all know it’s not in the same league. As...

Add Some Aggression to Your BMW with this 3D Design Steering Wheel One of Japan’s largest tuning companies, 3D Design, is also one of the very best makers of aftermarket parts for BMWs. 3D Design is known mostly for making its own cosmetic upgrades, both inside and out. Most notably, it’s known for making aluminum paddle shifters, which make modern BMWs more fun to drive. Now, though, the Japanese tuner is offering its own steering wheel for modern Bimmers and it’s ultra aggressive looking. If you own a sporty BMW but it just doesn’t feel exciting enough inside the cabin, this 3D Design steering wheel should help with that. It looks similar to the one you can get right from BMW’s M Performance Parts Division but it’s more polygonal that that. It&rsquo...

BMW Driving Experience in Italy: the BMW X6, M135i xDrive and M2 Competition taste the snow The 2020 Italian BMW Driving Experience season debuted on January 29th at the Livigno ice plateau. The main stages of the 2020 BMW Driving Experience program are the Advanced Safe and Ice Driving course in the series of Advanced Safe Driving Courses. In addition to the standard theory sessions, participants will have the opportunity to try out numerous practical sessions including braking exercises, obstacle avoidance, understeer, oversteer and two sets of track laps to perfect driving technique and cornering trajectories. This BMW Driving Experience will occur on the most prestigious slopes of the Italian territory: Vallelunga, Adria, Monza, Misano, and for the first time in Livigno. The A...

Jonathan Aberdein Joins BMW M Drivers Roster for 2020 DTM The 2020 DTM season will feature six drivers from BMW and up until today, we only knew five of them. The sixth driver was announced today as Jonathan Aberdein from South Africa. The 21-year old will be joining the roster for the upcoming season and will drive a BMW M4 DTM model after impressing the BMW M Motorsport director, Jens Marquardt racing for customer team, WRT. Therefore, we now know the six drivers that will be lining up at the starting line in a BMW M4 DTM: Marco Wittmann, Philipp Eng, Timo Glock, Sheldon van der Linde, Lucas Auer and Jonathon Aberdein. The South African driver proved his worth in the last season of the DTM, driving for Team WRT. He drove in all 18 races and had a total of eight finishes in the top ten...

Video: 2020 BMW M135i vs 2017 BMW M140i comparison There has been a lot of talk both online and offline about the new BMW 1 Series. It can seem as if many enthusiasts refuse to understand why BMW moved to a front-wheel drive platform and they always bring up the older M140i model for comparison. Of course the old M Performance car will perform better than its newer counterpart, the BMW M135i, as it’s powered by the brilliant B58 engine. However, most 1 Series models sold were not fitted with the B58 engine so, to the vast majority of customers, other things matter more, such as interior design, build quality and practicality. In those regards, the new 1 Series is superior. The guys from RaceChip put together a very interesting video comparing the two cars. They took a BMW M135i x...

BMW to build a new school in Ga-Rankuwa, South Africa A couple of weeks ago, BMW stated that it wants to ramp up its efforts to educate people with no access to schools around the world. Their goal is to support a million people from all over the globe gain access to education and the plan kicked off this week, in South Africa. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was present in the African country this week and she was part of the announcement that BMW will build an entire new school in Ga-Rankuwa, as part of its educational efforts. The new school will accommodate 1600 pupils and will cover education from grade RRR to Grade 12, which is basically kindergarten through high-school. The estimated investment will rise to about R113m ($7.5 million at today’s exchange rate) and will suppor...

SPIED: 2021 Rolls-Royce Ghost shows up once again, reveals new dashboard The future Rolls-Royce Ghost generation is still a few months away from its official unveiling, yet test prototypes are starting to lose some of their exterior cladding. Under the psychedelic camouflage tape, we can already start seeing the overall silhouette of the new Ghost as the latest spy photos reveal (you can see them here). The forthcoming generation is apparently giving up its softer styling for a more muscular and edgy design philosophy, which reminds very much of the latest Phantom series. The size of chrome radiator grille is similar to that on the new Cullinan, yet it visually resembles the Phantom grille. Also, the new luxury limousine from Crewe features revised air inlets, with a decisively rectang...

This BMW M8 Coupe in Nardo Gray Individual Color is simply stunning While Nardo Gray may be known as an Audi finish, recently it found its way to various models from other manufacturers, ranging from the Ferrari 458 Italia, Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG to the Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Now, it is also featured as an Individual Finish for this BMW M8 Coupe. This is the first M8 that we’ve seen in this color and at a first glance, is arguably the best one to date. The beautiful shade of grey matches the luxurious and sporty look of the BMW M8 and will turn heads everywhere it goes. Furthermore, this is not just a regular M8, but rather a BMW M8 Competition model which means it has a higher price tag and some other cool bits. Compared to the standard model,  the BMW M8 Competition is tuned u...

Video: MINI Cooper SE gets a wild first commercial The first ever commercially sold electric MINI is now available worldwide. The MINI Cooper SE is here to provide a fun alternative for those looking for a zero-emissions car. We recently sampled it and found the electric MINI a truly enjoyable ride albeit with a limited range. Nevertheless, this is meant to be more of a city car anyway and the first commercial featuring the “fresh kid on the block” shows it. The 1-minute long video shows the car in its natural habitat, around busy city streets. It also goes over the extremely fast-paced lifestyle we have these days and the challenges it presents. The new MINI deals with all of them and wants you to take a step in a new, bold direction, without too much regard to what others ...

Video: Here’s how the sound of future BMW EV models is made One of the key differentiators between internal combustion engines and electric cars is that the latter make no sound. It may seem peculiar but that becomes a problem at times. Not necessarily for the people inside, but for those on the outside, as they can be taken by surprise. For those inside, the serenity an EV offers might be just what the doctor ordered. However, in the particular case of BMW EV models that may also be an issue. That’s because people have associated a certain sound with speed and performance for a long time and it will be hard to drop it all in a matter of a few years. The sound a car makes with a V8 under the hood is hard to resist. Then again, the performance brought along by the EV boom is also i...

PHOTOS: Winter fun with the BMW X6 in the Italian Alps The new BMW X6 has recently celebrated its Italian market debut with a good dose of fun in the snowy Alps. The chosen location for the launch of the new X6 Sports Activity Coupe is the popular Livigno ski resort in the Italian Alps, near the country’s border with Switzerland. Livigno is located in the northernmost part of Italy, in the region of Lombardy, at an altitude of 1,816 meters above sea level. The new BMW X6 exudes a certain simplicity in its design, which is dominated by precise shapes and contours, that blend in a cohesive philosophy that reminds of the E71 ancestor. The 2020 BMW X6 displays some inherent similarities with the X5, but compared to the previous model generation, there is a clear differentiation is mo...

Should the BMW X7 be worried about the Cadillac Escalade? Prior to the BMW X7, Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class (originally GL-Class), Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90, if you wanted a seven-seat luxury vehicle, you sort of had to buy the Cadillac Escalade. Of course, the original Escalade was nothing more than a Tahoe in drag but it’s become quite a bit more than that over the generations. Now, this latest generation actually looks surprisingly good and it seems as if the American luxury giant has put in some real effort. So should the BMW X7 be worried? Last year, I would have laughed at that question. Having been in both the current X7 and the last-gen Escalade, I know first-hand that the two cars don’t even belong in the same sentence. While expensive, the last-gen Escalade had rental-car-...

BMW ramps up electric car motor output at Dingolfing plant BMW is expanding production capacity and increasing its staff at the Competence Centre for E-Drive Production in Dingolfing. Due to growing demand for electrified vehicles, the plant expects the number of modules needed for production of high-voltage batteries to double from the previous year. The number of electric motors required will also increase significantly. BMW aims for hybrid and electric cars to make up a quarter of new vehicle registrations by 2021. The number of employees assembling electric motors in Dingolfing will rise to 1,400 by the end of 2020, and is slated to grow to 2,000 over the mid-term, BMW added. Michael Nikolaides, head of Production Engines and E-Drives at the BMW Group: “We are embarking on a...

BMWBLOG Podcast: BMW 4 Series Grille — Could it be anything else? The BMW 4 Series just recently leaked and we’ve been discussing it ad nauseam ever since. Its new grille design is causing quite the stir among BMW enthusiasts, and car enthusiasts of all brands if I’m honest, for its enormous size. So in our latest episode of the BMWBLOG Podcast, could we really talk about anything else? In this new episode, I do discuss more than just the new 4 Series’ grille but it does take up the majority of the episode. There’s a lot to discuss when it comes to the new 4 Series and its radical new design. So I break it down, why it looks the way it does, why it’s not as bad as many enthusiasts claim and what lies ahead of the future of BMW design. I also point to a comm...

My Opinion: The New BMW 4 Series Grille Isn’t So Bad Okay, okay, calm down everyone. The new BMW 4 Series grille has been leaked and, yes, it’s enormous but it’s not as bad as some are making it out to be. I’ll admit, I was as shocked as most of you, upon first seeing the massive gaping maw on the new 4 Series. However, twenty four hours later, I’m starting to warm to it. After some deliberation, I’ve decided that, while still not great looking, it’s actually not so bad. In fact, I’m actually starting to like it more than I thought I would, for a couple of reasons. One is that, at least on the M440i, the grille design uses BMW’s new M Performance grille insert, which looks so much better than if it were to use vertical slats. The latter of...

BREAKING: 2021 BMW 4 Series Coupe Photos Leak Ahead of Official Reveal Some new photos of the next-gen 2021 BMW 4 Series have just leaked (here and here) showing off enough of the final production car to get an idea of what it’s going to look like. Right now, you’re mostly wondering what the grille looks like, as it’s been such a hot topic ever since the Concept 4 debuted. If that’s the case, you’re going to finally get your wish, as these photos show off the car’s new grille. And it’s very large. Up front, we see the final production car wearing a sheet, with some of that sheet pulled up at the front, revealing the new massive 4 Series grille design. It’s almost exactly as large as what we saw on the BMW Concept 4, with two enormous, gapi...

Video: Listen to the first V12 BMW ever made courtesy of this E32 750Li BMW has built a certain reputation for itself over the years as a master builder of inline 6-cylinder engines. They are the brand’s specialty but that doesn’t mean the Bavarians don’t know how to make other engine architectures as well. It took them a while but BMW did come up with a V12, back in the 1980s. Back then, the first BMW V12 would end up as the backbone of a legendary engine otherwise also known as the S70. In the 1980s things like emissions and gas prices weren’t nearly as restrictive on the way car makers operated as they are today. It was a completely different era from many points of view. Therefore, in the early ’80s, BMW started work on a V12 mill for its 7 Series flags...

BMW Partners with IMG for New York Fashion Week The BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe will get a huge popularity bump this month as it will be the official car of the New York Fashion Week. Staying true to their branding, marketing the 2 Series Gran Coupe as an unconventional choice for those of us with a rebel heart, BMW will be using the new model to drive around guests of the show. The new 2er will also be joined by the BMW X7 and the 7 Series sedan. This will mark the second year of partnership between IMG and BMW. The German brand will present a digital content series highlighting four fashion industry notables and the unconventional paths that led to their success, and host engaging experiences on site throughout the event. Activities include a four-part digital content series dubbed &ldquo...

ALPINA B3 Touring Configurator goes live for European Customers As American enthusiasts, we’re extremely jealous of European customers that can buy cars like the ALPINA B3 Touring. Sure, it’s out of most enthusiasts’ price range anyway but we’d still like to have the option to do so. However, for all of you European enthusiasts that can buy the B3 Touring, the online configurator has just gone live and you can spec yours exactly as you’d like. There aren’t that may options and the configurator isn’t nearly as modern or in-depth as BMW’s, so building an ALPINA B3 Touring isn’t as exciting as I’d hoped. Still, getting to spec your car B3, from paint to interior to packages, is pretty cool. There are only a handful of color option...

Funky BMW Aerodynamic Wheel developed specifically for BMW iX3 BMW’s first ever electric SUV will arrive in some markets in 2020. Along with an all-electric drivetrain, the BMW iX3 will also bring a few novelties. The BMW Aerodynamic Wheel is one of them.  According to BMW, the Aerodynamic Wheels on the BMW iX3 blend lightweight construction and reduced air resistance with the sporting elegance of a V‑spoke aluminum wheel in a whole new way. BMW also says this is the first time they’re using cast aluminum wheels with inserts consisting of a plastic carrier and an aluminum visible surface. The new aero wheels feature reducing 5 percent less drag compared to a conventionally powered BMW X3. The new Aerodynamic Wheels are not only more efficient but also lighter tha...

Buyer’s Guide: The Infamous BMW E65 / E66 7 Series Of all the 7 Series models in BMW’s history, the BMW E65/E66-generation might be the most heavily criticized. Some of that criticism is deserved and some isn’t and much of it is debatable. However, what isn’t debatable is that the E65 7er is an excellent used value at the moment. So we’re going to put together a bit of a Buyer’s Guide for any enthusiasts looking to get into an inexpensive luxury car. For this Buyer’s Guide, we’ll provide a brief crash course into the E65’s history, what it is, which models were noteworthy, what to look for and what to avoid. So let’s break it down. A Brief History The E65 BMW 7 Series is almost certainly the least loved 7er of all time but much of i...

BMW 3 Series Touring vs Mercedes C-Class Estate vs Volvo V60 Since the initial debut of the BMW 3 Series Touring, back during the E30-generation, it’s been one of the very best daily drivers on sale. That doesn’t mean it’s the only daily sport wagon, though, especially not anymore. More and more brands are debuting excellent wagons that can give the new 3er a real run for its money. So how can the new G21-gen 3 Series Touring take on some of its toughest competitors? Auto Express found out. In this new comparison test, the BMW 3 Series Touring took on the Mercedes-Benz C-Class Estate and Volvo V60. What’s so interesting about this segment is just how close each of these competitors are. None of them really put a foot wrong and are all extremely well-rounded daily...

Video: New BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe commercial goes against stream The BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe is about to reach dealerships around the world. The first international media test drives are now taking place in Portugal and the world is getting ready to welcome another controversial BMW model into the world. To mark the occasion, the marketing people over at BMW set up a couple of commercials for the four-door coupe, with a new approach. Last year we saw the first ads for the 2 Series Gran Coupe and they were implying the 2er was the second choice for most people. Or, to put it differently, the other choice. The aim of that ad was to say it’s OK to be different. When everyone chooses the same clothes, the same path, the same style, you could go for a different choice and set yourself...

Video: Petrolicious Takes a closer look at the BMW 1M Coupe Over the last 10 years BMW launched more M models than ever. Among them you’ll find cars that are already considered by many as classics even though their age doesn’t exactly fit in that description. The BMW 1M Coupe is one of those cars. Built in limited numbers, the 1M is regarded by many as the best BMW launched in the last decade and I’d have a hard time arguing they are wrong. The brainchild of some really passionate people inside Munich, the BMW 1M Coupe is not your run of the mill M car. As a matter of fact, some would say it’s not worthy of the M badge. Those would be the ‘purists’ who can’t get over certain things, like the fact that the 1M doesn’t have a bespoke M-develo...

Video: MINI Cooper SE Review goes over the essentials You can now buy one of the cheapest electric cars on the US market and it’s a premium choice too. The MINI Cooper SE is now on sale and the compact hatch is bound to stir up some heated conversations. Most will focus on its range but there’s so much more to this car than that. The guys from What Car? in the UK were invited to Miami to test the new electric MINI even though they are headquartered not far from where this car is actually made. Miami was chosen by MINI representatives as the perfect location for the first test drives and it’s easy to see why: it has the perfect weather for it, during winter time. While the temperatures in Miami during the test drive were closer to 25 degrees Celsius, in the UK, the home...

This BMW E46 M3 CSL could be yours for $103,000 As far as collectible BMW models go, some are obviously more expensive than others and some are rarer than others. At the very top of the list you’ll find cars like the BMW E30 M3 and the BMW E46 M3 CSL. This latter model is also considered by many the best M car ever made and seems to have a certain halo around it. Whenever you see one, you’d better rest assured you’re in the presence of greatness. Prices for the rare BMW E46 M3 CSL have also been going through the roof. It’s not just the fact that’s it’s a blast to drive that makes it so expensive, it’s also the fact that it was built in limited numbers. With only under 1,400 ever made, seeing one is a rare occurrence. The car we’re showing...

VIDEO REVIEW: Check out the BMW M850i Gran Coupe in our new video It’s hard to fault the BMW M850i Gran Coupe. That’s not to say I can’t find any faults, as it’s my job as a journalist and BMWBLOG’s resident curmudgeon to find things wrong with even the best of cars. Even still, the only faults I could find with the M850i Gran Coupe were minor, as it’s a wonderfully well-rounded car. In this video review, I talk about the newest Gran Coupe, what makes it so special and what’s wrong with it. First thing’s first, the BMW M850i Gran Coupe is the best non-M version of the 8 Series. I know its name is a bit confusing; it has an M badge but isn’t an actual M Division car and it has the word “Coupe” in its name but actually has ...