BMW Faqs

R&D is producing and selling fuel efficient city cars all over the world in order to keep up with the raise in gas prices. BMW itself is also planning on doing this exact same thing . BMW’s CEO Norbert Reithofer confirmed this week that they will be working on a new ‘mega city car’.

This new car will have a whole new look and two powertrains. One of the cars will be given motivation with the help of standard combustion and the other one will be completely electric. The electric car will of course meet all of the requirements with the California mandate that must be set up and met by 2012. This mandate requires that it be a fuel cell or battery powered car that can travel up to 200 on one single charge.

It is not uncommon for BMW to sell 4-cylinder models in Europe – but it is rare to find one in the U.S. It is common knowledge that you will not be able to purchase any model that is Bavarian and has less then six pistons. Of course it is not uncommon for automakers to change their tune and provide more for their consumers.

Inside Line stated that BMW is deciding on whether or not they will be adding the direct-injected 2.0 liter four-pot engine all the way from Europe to the 3-Series here in the States. The 170-hp engine powers the 320i and 120i across the pond. The ultra-efficient powerplant averages over 38 mpg in the European combined test cycle while still providing the razor-sharp handling that is BMW’s trademark.

Dinan is known to produce cars that go above and beyond the normal range of performance. Their latest production is the M3 that they equipped with a V8 derived 5 liter V10 engine that can also be found in the M5 and M6 and has won a few awards.

The eight replaced the inline-six on the previous model, but instead of remaining content to say “good job on the extra two cylinders”, Dinan asks what happened to the extra two from the V10. Not that they would have been happy with the V10, either. On that, Dinan pushed and pushed, boring and stroking out the engine’s ten cylinders until they got it up to 5.7 liters and 628 horsepower. Pretty sick, but saddled with the heft of a BMW 5 or 6.