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The alternative is to start down a path to insolvency because you kept 14,000 jobs the end result is you lose 180,000 jobs.  Business’s expand and contract all the time, keeping 14k employees because you’d feel bad about releasing them when you don’t have anything for them to do is bad business practice.  Are those…

You’re welcome.  You can have this gem too:

It was for Kung Fury, which is about as 80’s-tastic as is physically possible.

The 435i loaner they gave me had a ZF8 in it with paddle shifters, and did a damn good impersonation of a DCT. It happily bounced off the rev limiter if I put it in manual mode and didn’t tell it to upshift, and the shifts were snap-your-neck quick when you really got on it. Not sure what more a DCT has to offer over…

I seem to recall that their reason was a combo of low take-rate, cost to certify, and not having a manual on hand that would stand up to the torque of the engine while maintaining the clutch and shifter feel they wanted. I’d buy that the combo cost of certification and having to pay ZF or Getrag to redesign the…

The rumored upcoming 2 series Gran Coupe is going to be on the UKL platform, not based on the F22's platform. The same rumor does state the Coupe will get a second generation with RWD.

pretty solid bet they are underrated again.  They have underrated every engine they’ve built for the last decade or so.  No reason to stop now.

While that seems like a lot, by dollar value the US is only responsible for 7% of the worlds exported cars, which is 1/3 Germany’s export value, about half of Japan, and only slightly ahead of Canada This is despite being the #2 car manufacturer in the world and being ahead of both Japan and Germany in total…

I keep waiting for BMW to sorta-kinda set things on fire. They have a history of just switching to knock-down kits for cars sold in places with high tariffs(a knock-down kit is a box that contains every part, including the frame, required to build the car). The cars are technically built in country to bypass the tariff…

IIRC you cannot swap the engine of the car ina Le Mans series event. I believe the engine and chassis are the only things you cannot swap.

For me it was 3 fairly quiet pops then silence. I had just blown 2 holes in my block and a 3rd in the oil pan when cylinder #3 ate its bearing.

The ones I have heard of are using a full automatic transmission, but the ECU has been lobotomized such that it cannot make any decisions on it’s own. It only up or down shifts on command, and does so regardless of if it is safe to do so. If you tell it to downshift at redline in 2nd it will downshift to 1st and blow…

what if its an automatic transmission that only shifts when you tell it to?  I’ve heard of a few “dumb” automatics that are physically automatic gearboxes with torque converters and everything but only shift when they are told to by a human, including making shifts that will grenade the engine.

That V8 has been around in one way or another since 1996. Jag doesn’t want to spend the money to build a new V8 that has somewhat limited sales at this point, so they are turning to BMW.

Jag is already using Ford-based V8's.  They are switching sides from the USA to Germany.

I own a 6-speed and still reach for a 7th every now and then.  Same as when I had a 5-speed and kept reaching for 6th.  I imagine if I ever own a 7-speed I’ll reach for 8th every once in a while.

Virtually every BMW has the space for a V8 up front(save the X1/2), since V8s are shorter than their I6's and not much wider because all the I6's are slanted. They just don’t put them in the smaller cars because it would steal sales from the bigger cars and throw off the weight balance.

If you actually want real world 70-mph steady state cruising...You’ll need to turn the Car and Driver. That is actually one of their tests. Some cars get unexpectedly high results, like the 330i which returned 41mpg even though it is only rated to 34 by the EPA.

It’s on a 7ish year cycle, but they don’t replace/release the coupes and convertibles at the same time as the sedans. Additionally not all regions used to get the new 3 at the same time, hence it looks like it has been on sale for 10+ years, but when you look a the breakdown no one body style was on sale for more than…