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      11-26-2013, 03:50 AM   #195
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Boss330 View Post
I know how a special plant works when we are talking about a small dedicated number of engines. I have been at the Cosworth facility in the UK and seen the assembly process of their F1 engines and road going engines (Like some Aston Martin and Ford Cosworth Duratec engines). However those are fairly small numbers, like a few thousand a year, the S65 was made in 60.000 so it's hardly hand built.

To me, that indicates that the S65 and other M engines are mass produced on a assembly line, not hand built. Then the assembly line has to be more specialised or better than the one at the Steyr plant to make a difference.

The Munich engine facility makes 300.000 engines per year and the Steyr plant makes just over 1.000.000 engines per year, but with "only" 300.000 of those engines being petrol engines, the rest being diesels.

Seems like it's only the V12 still being produced on the "Special assmbly line" at Munich.

Overvierw over BMW plants:
http://www.bmwgroup.com/e/0_0_www_bm...rte/index.html

BMW Munich plant:
http://www.bmw-plant-munich.com/lowb.../en/index.html



Seems like the above plant info hasn't been updated for some time...

BMW Steyr plant:
http://www.bmw-plant-steyr.com/

So far I haven't found any indications of such a low volume manufacturing process at Munich to compare with a true dedicated plant such as I witnessed at Cosworth's facility and assembly of Aston Martin engines etc. In fact it seems more like the special plant is there to assemble the "odd" engines that doesn't fit in the mainstream lines than it exists for higher tolerances etc.

This thread also shows that the S65 "sticks out like a sore thumb" compared to other BMW engines when it comes to clearances...

http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=892838
Nice write up ... no one says that the M engines were handbuild as in some other special car branches, but they were so unique, that they could only be produced in the special engine plant ... also ín times where they were based on BMW AG engine blocks!
That´s the real reason, why it was an realy bad move in terms of M spirit ... none could says, that the S55 was an bad engine because it is build on the regular Steyr plant, but one great and important thing, that make the M cars so special, has gone ... the uniqueness of their engines.

Until now the M cars especially the M3 were build in the M spirit as "Rennsporttechnik für die Straße" and have only 20% of common part with the AG models they are based on. Also this has dropped to 50% which meens that the new M cars are much less unique and therefor much cheaper to produce ... without an drop in the consumer price.

SO you now are simple getting less for the same price compared with the old M cars. The performance doesn´t counts, because all M cars were better than their precessors ... every new M3 was the "best M3 ever", but with with the older M cars we get this performance increase together with the uniqueness of an car build in the spirit of the M-GmbH - race cars (from the technical point of view) in the outfit of regular coupes or sedans.

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