[swamp2]

The banter on this otherwise excellent and enjoyable board has got beyond tedious and beyond annoying here in the last couple of days. I have resorted to quite a few more slightly mean spirited replies in my frustration. I think all of those with any optimism and realism left have been put in this same defensive (then offensive) mode. I have found myself so frustrated that I have begun or ended many of my posts with a giant sigh of "ugh". I am not an admin here, and surely you don't have to listen to anything I have to say, but do please give it some thought. I did in writing this.

I am a skeptic by nature. I like facts and evidence, however, no one can deny the importance of emotion in driving. Since effectively "no one" (none of "us") has driven the car yet we must rely on those who have. I like to have the facts and evidence as well as my own direct hands on experience to make my judgments. However, until we can get the hands on all any of us will have is the experiences of others to help us learn. I will be massively disappointed if the car turns out to be a disappointment. So many of us will. Certainly this enormous expectation also places our delicate dreams on a very tall and very unstable pedestal. We'll each have to figure what it means to each of us for the car to be a disappointment. Some of us really do have totally unrealistic expectations, others will be pleased by anything faster than 4.8 0-60, a bit of fun on the back roads on the weekend and an M badge. I think most of us, however, have realistic expectations; we understand that automotive designers and engineers, especially in the market segment trying to bring maximum performance per dollar into mass production face immense challenges and must execute difficult compromises. We also understand that a car must meet some basic sales and marketing goals as well, less it will never make it off of the drawing board. In this same vein many of us need to give up the arm chair designer/engineer position we see ourselves in. Sure we can all hope and dream for a car released to our personal dream specs but let's not be so pompous to think we could lead the M division or design M cars. Many of us could probably contribute in a small way at a company like BMW but how many here have any automotive engineering background at all?

So back to the facts, what do we really know?

1. Quite a few journalists have spent some time behind the wheel of the car doing some fairly spirited driving. We have some preliminary write ups of their thoughts. More complete pictures, movies and extensive stories are in the works now and we will see them quite soon. Unfortunately, I think full instrumented tests and hard data on such things and acceleration and braking are some time away as instrumentation was not allowed during this round of access to the car.
2. Most of the folks agreed on most points about the car, those being:
2a. The car is darn fast in the straights and on the track.
2b. The new V8 is simply brilliant.
2c. The new V8 sounds suitable for an exotic (sure some said they missed the metallic rasp of the E46 M3 as well).
2d. There was some feeling that the steering had some problems; being too boosted/too light, not communicative enough, etc.
2e. The car has continued to add comfort as it has done continuously from E30 - E92, although it is probably louder as well.
2f. The car is likely >> RS4 in most pure performance aspects.
2g. When hammered, some of it uphill, the car gets about 11 mpg.
Other details we know:
3. The car out sprints the Ferrari 360 Modena from 0-1000m
4. The car will have an official BMW Nurburgring lap time of "definitely less than 8:10". This places it in quite a high echelon of cars such as the BMW M6, Ferrari 360 Modena and Porsche 911 Carerra S.

Call me a fool if you like but the future looks quite rosy to me.

Let's all try to do a bit better job of limiting the overly emotional posts, stick to the facts, stay on topic and minimize the speculation. Most importantly let's enjoy this board as THE best place to share the latest gossip on, the most accurate news of and all the details about our common interest and passion: the E90/E92 M3.

Cheers, peace and happy posting.