Recently there have been some woes about the i range, it’s financial future, costs and whatever other similar issues but all those seem to have disappeared.

It’s not that the Bavarians have assured eco-friendly car buyers that they’re watching over them, it’s just that in their latest announcement, nothing was spoken about those problems.

Instead, the guys at BMW announced the production site for the internal combustion engine they’ll be placing in the upcoming i8 hybrid supercar.

The three cylinder TwinTurbo power 1.5 liter engine will develop 220 horsepower and some 221 lb-ft of torque while still providing some decent fuel economy.

Granted, It’s not the best thing to appeal to people who’ve got the green bug but it’s a cracking engine. Apart from everything it promises in terms of performance and fuel economy, there’s the more practical stuff.

We’re talking about the simple idea of how the new engine BMW puts in the i8 is basically half of their glorious 3.0 liter straight six.

That’s the kind of stuff that keeps development costs down and reliability factors up. Maintenance should also come in cheap since plenty of parts are shared.

The new engine will be built at BMW’s engine plant in Hams Hall, near Birmingham, UK. This facility was built and started work in 2001 and has been on a roll ever since.

Only recently, that factory rolled out its 3 millionth engine. It’s one of BMW’s key facilities and one of the most important bits of the British automotive industry.

That seems like a worthy location to build an engine for a game changing car.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW announces production site for i8 engine appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

The Bavarians are great at making their own cars and, as Rolls Royce and Mini teach us, they’re brilliant at making British ones as well.

Certainly, despite the Germans having a serious effect on the development of the two British brands they still manage to retain some of the appeal.

This might be the reason behind all the excitement we see in the reports coming in of how BMW might be working towards reviving the Triumph brand.

A smattering of British magazines, most notably Autocar, have gotten an idea of how BMW just filed in a new patent for the Triumph name.

Since it’s not your usual arrangement, the new paperwork gives people more hope. Not only is BMW holding on to the British sports car historic name but they’re also registering for the branded parafanelia that comes along.

There’s no desirability loss on the Triumph vehicle front but it’s pretty tricky to wonder what sort of vehicle BMW would build for the brand.

A lot of time has been spent on the subject and after seeing the Mini Roadster introduced the number of options available is definitely slimming down.

Basically, all that’s left would be for BMW to make a cheaper, stripped out version of their Z4 roadster and something of an open top BMW 1 Series M Coupe (maybe a targa top?).

The first has already been shot down before on account of some dealer and overall distribution problems. If the Bavarians have worked things out it could be brilliant.

An N20 powered version of these cars under the Triumph name could end up as being the ultimate rival for the likes of the Toyota GT86 or even the upcoming Alfa Romeo 4C.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW to bring back Triumph brand? appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

No owner of the E82/E88 BMW 135i bought that car because it was slow but, as always, somebody came up with the idea of giving it more power.

The culprits this time come from Great Britain and are maned Superchips Ltd.

What they did is pretty much self explanatory within the title, they remapped the 135i’s ECU in order to achieve more brute force figures.

So, whereas in the standard car your 3 liter straight six twin turbocharged engine develops 311 horsepower the new chip map will raise the output to a more rounded figure of 360 horsepower. Pretty much same story with the torque delivery of the car as you now get 456 Nm at just 3359 rpm compared to the “old” 394 Nm of the basic engine.

Your Superchips remapped ECU will now take your E82/E88 BMW 135i from 0 to 60 mph in around 5.3 seconds and top speed is still the 155 mph we are used to from the Germans but the car will be getting there faster due to the extra torque.

Pricing for the ECU remap of the 135i is, in the UK, £445.00 including VAT (17.5%) and the upgrade will be available through 100 dealerships around the country.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW 135i gets some more power appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

Tom Ford, renown British motoring journalist and TV presenter managed to achieve a record breaking run in terms of vehicle autonomy by managing a 1013 mile trip on a single tank of diesel.

The car he used for this feat was a BMW E90 320d and the journey was destined to take Tom Ford from the UK to Munich and back, but unfortunately the car needed a refill back at Lille.

The fact that he didn’t manage to complete the trip is a bit disappointing but this is still an amazing achievement by distance in itself.

There’s more too, Tom Ford stated that he did not use the air conditioning but he also didn’t do a completely economical run using techniques such as coasting, or driving deliberately slowly for the trip. The trip was covered in yesterday’s Sunday Times newspaper.

BMW can be proud and owners of the E90 320d who must have known the car was capable of such range. Biggest reason for the good news is that the car achieved figures of 75.9 mpg UK (63.2 mpg US or 3.7lt/100km), and never went below 65 mpg UK (54.1 mpg US or 4.4 lt/100km) for the entire trip. The overall figures for Tom Ford and the BMW 320d come in at an average speed of 59.3mph (95.4km/h) and 68.9mpg UK (57.4 mpg US or 4.1 lt/100km).

All things considered, if you’re a bit less careful you should be able to achieve at least 700-800 miles on one tank which would easily cover a medium sized commute for a month on a single tank.

About Post Author

Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW 320d EfficientDynamics did 1013 miles on one tank appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.