News & Reviews- Make: BMW

With BMW's 2 Series now firmly established in the German maker's lineup, it's no surprise that new variants are beginning to appear. Starting this summer, BMW will offer its xDrive all-wheel drive system on the M235i, marking the first time that all-wheel drive has been available for the 2 Series. The convertible will also get optional xDrive, at least in Europe (North American availability has yet to be announced).

The M235i xDrive Coupe gets the same 3.0-litre twin-turbo inline-six as the rear-drive M235i Coupe, generating the same 326 horsepower (320 horsepower in the North American market). It also gets the same eight-speed automatic transmission, but the power is channeled to all four wheels allowing a 0-100 km/h time of 4.6 seconds – 0.2 seconds quicker than the rear-drive car.

Another upgrade for the summer of 2014 sees BMW 1 Series, 2 Series, 3 Series, 4 Series and 5 Series cars equipped with automatic transmissions and navigation getting a new proactive Read Full Story

Following in the footsteps of the BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupe that debuted at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este, BMW has unveiled a similarly forward-looking luxury four-door concept at the 2014 Beijing International Automobile Exhibition.

The Gran Lusso Coupe was BMW's first-ever collaboration with Pininfarina, and was said to be an "interpretation of a luxurious BMW coupe as seen through the eyes of Pininfarina." The recently unveiled Vision Future Luxury Concept borrows heavily from the coupe's styling cues and interprets them in a four-door form that BMW says "furnishes a long-term outlook on the perception of modern luxury for the BMW brand."

Summing up the concept, BMW's head of design Karim Habib explained that, "the design of the BMW Vision Future Luxury is the messenger of our philosophy of modern luxury, one in which innovative technologies play a key and vital role."

Key to efficiency and performance are lightweight construction techniques, Read Full Story

I've owned six BMWs in my lifetime including two 5 Series, but none that comes anything close to this new 2014 535d xDrive. My first was a 1982 528e with a five-speed manual that I bought from a repo lot for much less than it was worth, but all I could afford. To be clear it wasn't my first BMW, that being a '74 Bavaria 3.0S, which could be considered the predecessor to the 5 and 7 Series combined, but the 528e was probably the best car I've ever owned. After replacing the alloys with a set of 1984 "mags" and re-and-reing interior parts (including the Blaupunkt stereo complete with the updated rear shelf and Blaupunkt speakers) from that same 1984 wreck, I sold it to a friend at 418,000 km and heard it ran well over 500,000 km before a runaway parked car T-boned it and its life ended, a sad demise to a very faithful car. The 120 horsepower Eta engine was never fast, but it was torquey which made it feel quick off the line, and it was a dream on the highway and nirvana on a curving road. Read Full Story

Despite the proliferation of new models it has introduced lately, BMW seems unlikely to ever build a four-door convertible, so it would appear that the legendary M3 Convertible is history. After all, 3 Series cars are now all four-door models.

But that's okay, because two-door versions of 3 Series cars still exist as 4 Series cars, and that means an all-new M convertible: the 2015 M4 Convertible, which is scheduled to debut at the upcoming New York International Auto Show.

Like its M3 forebears, the M4 Convertible delivers all the performance features of the M4 Coupe, but with unlimited headroom. That means it gets the same 3.0-litre, twin-turbocharged straight six engine cranking out 425-horsepower and 406-lb-ft of torque, and the same choice of six-speed manual or seven-speed M dual-clutch automated transmission delivering power to the wide rear wheels. According to BMW, it can run from 0-100 km/h in about 4.4 seconds with the automated manual, or a couple tenths Read Full Story

BMW has been on a bit of a roll with new model introductions lately and shows no signs of slowing down. The German brand's latest new model announcement is also one of its biggest, in more ways than one: BMW has confirmed that it will be introducing a larger sibling to its popular X5 "Sport Activity Vehicle": the full-size, three-row X7. The all-new X7 will be built exclusively at BMW's Spartanburg plant in South Carolina, and the company will invest US$ 1 billion in the plant to provide the required additional capacity.

"We will expand the plant's annual production capacity by 50 percent up to 450,000 vehicles by the end of 2016," said Dr. Norbert Reithofer, chairman of the board of management at BMW. "Today's capacity is around 300,000 vehicles. This investment will also create an additional 800 jobs, increasing the total workforce to 8,800 on site."

The Spartanburg plant is celebrating 20 years of operation this year, and in addition to the upcoming X7, it produces Read Full Story