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Originally Posted by Phillies8008
Yeah, definitely – I'm certainly not telling anyone what to buy, nor that their choice is wrong. It's your car and you should buy what you want for whatever reason you want, "logical" or not. I'm just saying that for someone who's mostly commuting and/or doing the normal day-to-day stuff, the difference between a "Full M" and an "M Lite" isn't going to be all that stark, so I'd take that into account when making my decision. Is the extra expense worth it? If you feel that it is – for any damn reason you like – then by all means go for it. I'm happy if you're happy, lol.
I just get tired of the "if it isn't a Full M it might as well be a Camry" snobbery. It's exhausting.
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100% agree!
But the problem is BMW (and nearly every other manufacturer) has dropped the manual transmission from their lineup of regular non-M cars. As a BMW owner who came on board in 1988 when the E30 M3 had just hit the market (and no one wanted them), I was a BMW enthusiast before the M-Division was really a thing. In-the-day, the street-version of the E30 M3 was not that big of a leap from the E30 325is in performance and the market realized it and wasn't willing to pay the $10K premium for it. One can no longer just buy a decent manual-transmission sport sedan for a reasonable price. I'm not willing to fork over a mortgage payment to have a manual transmission. Who gives a shit about a $78K, 470 HP M3 when 200 HP of it really isn't necessary for highly aggressive street driving.
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Truth Bomb. A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."