Quote:
Originally Posted by e46e92love
|
I'm siding with the opposition here. Your source doesn't really even address the key point of contention here. Journalists often give praise to an OEM for some outsourced component (steering, tranny, diff, electronics, etc.).
Now although I would give the vast majority of the design/engineering/manufacturing credit to Getrag for the M-DCT in the E9X M3, BMW and Getrag almost for sure cooperated on the unit. After all software for the transmission must cooperate with the engine software (further cooperation/integration has been discussed for the DCT in the M4). This tight knitting clearly requires some co-development and this is very typical as the supplier engineering team becomes a bit intermingled with the OEMs team during the development phase.
If I were to speculate on the customizations for BMW software is one obvious one as is the overall external packaging. The M-DCT unit advertised on Getrags website (right around and prior to the launch time of the E9X M3) looked ENTIRELY different than the actual unit. I'm sure those pics can easily be dug up. However, the internals both in their advertised unit and those for the other BMW models offering a nearly identical spec, are likely very close to identical. They probably offer very slight internal revisions and updates here and there but are going to be largely identical. There is plenty of documentation both external and I believe straight from the horses mouth (from BMW) stating this as the case.