BMW M2 tagged posts

It has been almost 2 months since we report the news of the BMW M2. Many things happened during the past months, for example the upcoming Audi RS3 was estimated to offer around 400hp.

It looks like BMW is following up the competition, and adjusted the engine power range. The latest news says the BMW M2 will have 374 – 395 hp, and the energy will comes from a modified version of the 3.0L turbo 6-cylinder N55 engine. Please note that this is just and estimation and it is not officially confirmed by BMW at this moment.

Yesterday VW revealed the A3 Clubsport Quattro – which is believed to be a concept prototype of the upcoming RS3 sedan.

The biggest news comes from the concept car is its 525hp 5-cylinder turbo engine. From my point of view, this is a revolution in the market. The reason is: VW is able to pump out 525hp from the 2.5-litre displacement, using only 1.5 bar pressure of turbo boost, this translates to 212hp per litre. For comparison, the Mercedes-Benz M133 engine which is used on the CLA45AMG, is using a much higher 1.8 bar of boost, but can only achieve 181hp per litre.

The VW engine has excellent torque curve too: 443 lb-ft available from 2300 to 6000 rpm...

Today comes updates to the future BMW M2:

– Start of production in late 2015;
– Used a N55 based 6 cylinder turbo engine, 365-375 hp

The M2 is a must-do for BMW because Mercedes-Benz will introducing the 367hp W205 C450 next year. Without the M2, currently BMW has no product to compete with the Mercedes rival.

The reason why BMW not take the turbo 4 cylinder engine route for M2 may due to:

1. Larger turbo lag for the 4 cylinder engine to achieve same output;
2. Excessive developement cost to overcome the shortcoming mentioned in #1.

For enhancements made to the “standard” N55 engine to achieve 370hp-level ouput, the following are some speculations:

– Tuning to the ECU to ...