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Originally Posted by templarklimek
IMHO BMW made a mistake by not retaining the S65 at 4.4L(440hp stock). an engine they already have. They dropped in the S55 to save money on production. Plain and simple. No special M motors anymore. BMW said it was to save gas, nonsense. Audi, Mercedes, Ford, GM still use V8's.
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The problem is that the S65 is not an efficient engine. It's true that they could have made it more efficient (by employing direct injection for example). But the fact is that efficiency and high RPM power production are diametrically opposing goals. At some point you hit the point of diminishing returns and have to change course. Note that GM and Ford have more displacement to work with and generally these engines make peak power at much lower RPM than the S65. By the way, these engines borrow heavily from the light truck siblings so there is cost sharing here just like there is with BMW. And Audi and Mercedes are abandoning naturally aspirated V8s just like BMW is. The 4.2L Audi V8 is being dropped despite its use of GDI, so they see the writing on the wall just like BMW does.
I will say that I wish BMW would have made a case for a smaller displacement turbo V8 for the M3/M4 like Mercedes is doing with AMG.
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The S55 will be a fine engine. At the very least I wish BMW just said "look, we want to save money by having the parts shared with all of our products."
Rather than the false mantra of saving gas. I don't drive an M to save damn gas.
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It's not realistic to expect a company to just abandon standard marketing practice. None of BMWs competitors have stopped extolling the virtues of their products and BMW would surely be foolish to try and compete on those uneven grounds.