Not because of the electric revolution: While the board members preach change and put one car after the other on a leash, the petrolheads among the developers are fighting for their old ideals - with success. At Porsche and BMW, they have now punched through two classic driving machines again.
Jos van As is smiling all over the face. The BMW engineer is just getting out of a prototype that he himself would hardly have expected. After the Bavarians have given up the unique selling point of rear-wheel drive with the current single and double, made common ground with front-wheel drive compacts like the Audi A3 or the Mercedes A-Class and sacrificed a good part of the driving pleasure on the altar of platform strategies and cost reduction, is next to that Head of Driving Dynamics, now with hot tires and crackling exhaust, a car that points back to its roots: With a new two-series Coupé, BMW wants to remind one more of driving machines like the 2002i and prove that efficiency and common sense are not always the decisive factors must be the way from A to B, but that it can also be emotions and pleasure. "A compact format, a straight six-cylinder, and above all, the loyalty to rear-wheel drive, that is the formula for driving pleasure for us," project manager Martin Gruber sums up all the important ingredients. And the team around Van As stirred them together accordingly. Of course there are more practical cars in the Kampkat class and some that are more economical, the developers admit, but no other car is as much fun as the two-seater coupé, summarize the state of the art.
It is unusual these days that driving fun, at least the old-fashioned custom, is once again at the top of the list of requirements. While a speed limit on the autobahn after the elections in September has at least become a conceivable option, even full-throttle brands such as Aston Martin or Lamborghini are currently turning to Electric Avenue and swearing off the combustion engine. And big manufacturers like Audi, Mercedes or BMW seem a bit as if they are almost ashamed of their fun cars. Even if they earn the money with which they expand their electric fleets, pay their CO2 fines and pay their share of the environmental premium.
That's why you can understand the joy in the faces of men like van As when they rave about cars like the two-seater coupé, because the petrolheads have defied the trend and if they haven't won a win, then at least won a delay.
After all, BWM put a lot of effort into this. The two-door, which will be built in Mexico from autumn, will therefore initially be on sale in the USA and will only be available from us at prices just under 40.000 euros in February 2022, is not based on ones and two, but on three and four . This means that it not only offers the more powerful architecture for the drive system and chassis, but is also much sturdier than its predecessor.
Where three and four are the benchmark for driving fun in their class, the two is even more agile and aggressive: two hands shorter than a four and a few hundred pounds lighter on top of that, it is even closer to the road and steers easier when cornering and then accelerates even better out again. Precise, alert and agile and yet so calm that the driver still remains relaxed despite all the commitment.
Even two hours further to the northwest, the joy of driving is celebrating once again happy origins and another developer is beaming: Rico Löscher works as a specialist for the overall vehicle development of the Porsche Cayenne and can hardly believe what kind of car he is in. In times when his board member Oliver Blume is raising the prognoses for the electric quota almost every month, making deals with battery pioneers like Mate Rimac and explicitly excluding any car apart from the 911 from electrification, Löscher is driving a prototype over the test track fits in well with the time like a filterless cigarette in a yoga studio or a bloody steak in a vegan bistro. Instead of finally banning the petrol engine from the large SUV, he even re-drilled it and developed a new, as yet nameless, top version for the coupé: 640 hp and 850 Nm are now in the data sheet of the 4,0-liter eight-cylinder , that's 90 PS and 80 Nm more than the current Cayenne Turbo and the plug-in of the Turbo S E-Hybrid is now only 40 PS missing. Above all, however, it is 40 hp more than the Audi RSQ8 and only ten less than the Lamborghini Urus - and since the V8 engine is built together with the Cayenne engine in Zuffenhausen, it was a matter of honor for the Porsche team .
Just a little more than three seconds for the standard sprint and a top speed of 300 km / h - these values are impressive. But when you sit behind the wheel of the prototype, you can hardly stop being amazed: the stately weight seems to evaporate and the laws of physics are forgotten as soon as a shadow of the little toe falls on the big accelerator.
Löscher knows that the car is not exactly politically correct. But he also knows that customers not only in the Emirates and Russia, in America or China will be grateful to him for the civil disobedience in the fight against complete electrification and the defiance during the transformation. And have to pay dearly for this gratitude. Because the new top model will hardly be available for well below 200.000 euros. And that at the latest explains why there are cars like this one. The surcharge of around 50.000 euros compared to the conventional turbo bears no relation to the effort involved in this tuning - even if the developers even brought the designers on board and gave the coupé a more distinctive roof spoiler, a larger rear wing and a new apron .
Petrolheads like van As or Löscher have won another small victory with their current prototypes and defied the transformation. But the change will hardly be stopped, and with regard to their own careers, none of the engineers will want that either. On the contrary. It is not for nothing that two of the soon-to-be-seven Cayenne variants have already been electrified, and there is much to suggest that the next generation of the Stuttgart bestseller will be completely electric. And BMW man van As has long made his peace with the electric cars. Without leaving his smile on his lips, he switched to another prototype after the brisk lap in two, who shoots suspiciously quietly through the large goal onto the overland lap. When he is back after two hours on lonely country roads, you can no longer hear the exhaust crackling and no radiator blowing. But at least the smell of burnt rubber rises up in your nose here too - and the grin has not left his face.