The BMW 1M has been creating quite the stir in the automotive industry, coming out strong beating its older brother the M3. Now that it has beat one of the industry benchmarks, magazines and readers alike are asking “what else will this baby BMW beat?” Motor Sport Magazine has begun to answer this question by pitting the 1M against Audi’s new sports coup, the TTRS. The two cars are very evenly matched with the 1M having only 15 horsepower on the TTRS, but the TTRS has all-wheel-drive. The tradeoff should lead to an epic matchup. The video below doesn’t give a clear verdict but it does show the BMW 1M and Audi TTRS dancing around the track.
Top selling racing franchise for the Xbox, Forza Motorsport, has shown off some new images from their fourth installment on the series, due out this fall. The screen shots are stunning. I first saw these four pictures of the cars sitting in a showroom and I thought, “they were real cars”, but in fact, they are how the cars will be rendered in game. The five pictured below are the cars that will only be available depending on where you pre-order the game. The one you need to remember is if you pre-order at Best Buy you get the BMW 1M, which really is the only one you should care about. Not too much else out about the game right now but as news comes out it will be right here.
(Source: Jalopnik)
Taking it old school. There is inspiration at every corner in this video. DTM FTW.
When you think of drifting, names like Nissan, Mazda, and now Ford come to mind, so when I found this video of BMW’s getting sideways I was quite excited. The Valvoline drift team is running all types of BMW’s new and old starting with a E30 M3 all the way up to the E46 and everything in between. It’s not every day you find euro drifting goodness professionally shot and set to good music so enjoy this little gem all the way from Poland.
(Source: Bimmer Post)
New to the BMW connected drive system will be the ability to use iPhone and other smartphone apps on a BMW’s navigation screen. By plugging in a phone into the car’s dock, the car and phone will be able to communicate. Certain apps which have the iPod-out software will appear in the same exact format that you see on your phone. Facebook and Twitter have their own car based view which will only allow you to read summaries of your friends posts, and allow the driver to make preset statuses. What I find the most exciting is the Pandora integration. With the connection of a smartphone and its 3G connection, the BMW will have a full featured Pandora interface which gives you access to all your stations, rate songs and create new stations all from the car. Once this feature is available in more cars, I think it may very well be the end of satellite radio. Overall, this new ConnectedDrive that will allow apps seems to be a huge game changer for BMW.
Akropovic Evolution a BMW tuning company has decided to put the top BMW car, the M3, against their top bike, the S 1000 RR. Both the bike and the car got some tuning work done then raced in an interesting format. The two competitors started on either ends of a track, and the goal was to catch the other. Not much else to say as the video explains it all, check out the video below of a M3 vs. a S 1000 RR.
(Source: BMW Blog)
Yep that’s right, the new baby BMW M1 has been declared faster than its older brother the M3. German Magazine Auto Motor Und Sport took both the cars out to Hockenheim racetrack to settle the sibling rivalry. The result was the M3 putting up a fastest lap time of 1:14.2 minutes and the M1 beating it with a time of 1:14.1 minutes. Their times are super close and with times like that it’s reasonable to assume that they will run about the same time with an average driver behind the wheel. Other cars the two beat out were the Audi TT RS and Porsche Cayman S with 1:15.0 and 1:14.3 times respectively. So, right now it would seem that BMW is the king of the German sports car jungle with both of their cars beating out the competition. Although they are only .1 second away on the track, the M1 comes in at over $11,000 cheaper than the M3 making it not only faster but a much better deal, so if it’s speed you’re after the M1 is the obvious choice.
