What clear future do you see for BMW and racing

Exclusive Interview with the Head of BMWNA Product Planning and Strategy/BMW Motorsport Manager, Martin Birkmann – A Look into the Future World of ///M Cars, Racing, and Current Engine Tech. At the recent 2010 NAIAS, we got a chance to speak with Martin Birkmann who is the Head of Product Planning and Strategy with BMW NA, as well as BMW Motorsport Manager in the U.S. If you haven’t already, we advise you get some coffee brewing or pop-corn popping – what follows is extremely interesting information about current and future BMW products.

With BMW’s new engines, the revamped N54 and now the N55, what have you upgraded on the N54?

Martin Birkmann: With the N54 we’ve basically changed the mapping of the engine, pressure of the engine, given it a more sporty, more torque, and peak oriented performance curve.

What are the differences between the N54 and N55?

Martin Birkmann: At first glance we’ve changed something in the architecture, we made the engine more compact, but in terms of costumer benefit the biggest change is the application of VALVETRONIC. With variable valve lift we eliminate the throttle and so we’ve made the engine again more efficient than the N54. The N55 is maintaining the N54’s base performance level, but gives you a lot of enhancement on the efficiency side

Will we see the N55 engine across the range?

Martin Birkmann: We started announcing the N55 for the 5 series GT so you can expect to find it in the regular 5 series sedan, one series, and we’ll roll it out for more and more applications.

With the new 5 series, what kind of changes can we expect to see on the new M5?

Martin Birkmann: I think it’s been widely speculated and confirmed that we’ve somewhat seen the dawn of the end of the NA engine. M is no exception, we’ve launched our first turbo M engines and I think that will be the biggest difference if you look at the tech spec sheet – that we will go with turbo charging for the M5. There is speculation that I don’t want to comment about; we will clearly see a change in the transmission strategy, we are still examining the need for a second transmission variant. We’ll know more about that as we go forward, as you know, every one should know that BMW NA in persona is a big proponent of manual transmissions and three pedal vehicle operation, but it’s not a trend that you see in the market gaining a lot of momentum right now. Our customers want more semi-automatic transmissions, so that’s a must, and everything else is a can. We’ll see as we approach the launch of the car.

What clear future do you see for BMW and racing?

Continued

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