Quote:
Originally Posted by aus
It's sad, but //M only stands for MARKETING now instead of Motorsport. 
What's even more sad is, people are actually buying them and they're selling in better numbers than BMW anticipated. It's even more sad that so many people buy the M3 with a sun roof over the carbon fiber roof.
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For most it is really not worth to have carbon fiber roof instead of sun roof, because people don't really care if they are a couple of tenths slower in theory, as they are not going to push it to the limit anyways. These cars are not really motorsport cars. They are fully streetable cars which are built to be driven in traffic with stereo systems, air conditioning etc... M is marketing, as you said. It is the letter that provides sociological acceptance and appraisal and allows the manufacturer to charge higher prices for that.
Giving the reason for attaching M to a certain car, they can always say that the tuning of the engine has been done by the division that is called "Motorsport". Even if the "Motorsport" division would be totally clueless of how to push >500 hp from a small 3-liter diesel engine...