Quote:
Originally Posted by advantage20
To all those who say that anything that's not a REAL ///M shouldn't get the ///M badge: if you were to purchase a day-to-day F30 aside from your ///M3, would you deliberately not choose the new optional ///M brakes or the nice and thick rimmed ///M wheel JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE BADGED ///M?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mkoesel
From what I can tell, people are mainly taking issue with "M" being used in the model name (and thus appearing on the back of the car).
M-badged parts and the MSport package have obviously been available for a long time now.
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The pretention behind it is that some M car owners here do not appreciate the fact that a non-M product is badged M and therefore sucks from the M aura, thus diluting the quality and exclusivity of "real" M vehicles.
If this is the actual issue (preserving M's quality and heritage), then the same reasoning should apply to M badged sporty options & accessoires (brakes, steering wheels, seats, door sills...) which shouldn't be available on regular vehicles because they are...regular vehicles and because their quality and aspect do not always match those coming from a real M car (the M Sport's steering wheel doesn't exactly look like the M3 wheel, the M sport rims are not as light, the new M brakes available on the F30 are certainly not as strong...). But if offering diverse M equipment on basic vehicles is acceptable, then putting an M logo on the trunk lid of a vehicle which, though not a real M, has been developped by M and tweaked to offer significantly higher driving qualities, is also acceptable.
If these discontent people are separating these 2 issues, on the one hand accepting that an M Sport 318d (purely image product) is named so and gets plenty of M badges in the cabin, on the rims...just not on the trunk lid, and on the other hand disapproving an M badge on the trunk lid of an M Performance M335i (though closer to a real M vehicle than an M Sport 318d), then I argue that these pretentions are not based on "preserving M's quality, heritage and image" but simply on preserving their own image and ego of sporting the M logo exclusively on their own trunk lid. It is all right to want to avoid triviality and stand out when you buy the 'real deal' (even more so when you pay a big cheque), but if this is the main issue, we shouldn't be talking about heritage and tradition but merely about the right to an upmarket image earned by putting in the required cost. If however heritage is the main issue, then be consistent and disapprove every item that's badged M aside from real M hardcore vehicles and which hurt M's quality and tradition, at least as much as you disapprove your own vehicle's image being diluted by lower range vehicles wearing the M badge on their back, as performant as they might be. And naturally, don't drive a 1M or an M3 because M has long ago 'sold out' on basic 116i or 320d M Sport.
It should be clear though that BMW Motorsport is not a confidential racing team but a globally growing sub-brand which logically offers a whole bunch of products and accessories: hence hardcore M vehicles in first place, but also M Sport image vehicles, M accessories available even on non-M Sport vehicles (wheel...), and all the more, a range of M Performance products which without being hardcore M vehicles have a decent edge over regular models, are actually developped with M's engineering expertise and thus legitimately deserve a name and therefore a badge in association with M.