A Front-wheel-drive BMW?

Greetings, dear readers. Two weeks or so ago, I read on Auto Express (and you can be late to the party too, here) that BMW is going to break their identity as a rear-wheel-drive performance brand. The alleged “1 Series GT” set to debut at the Paris Auto Show next month is seriously going to be a a MINI wearing a kidney grill and even worse, an impostor’s Hofmeister Kink, a design element that Wikipedia states “the Hofmeister kink is said by BMW to subtly highlight the fact that all BMW models have rear-wheel drive (or all-wheel drive biased to the rear).” Think about that while you watch this video (fun stuff happens past 40 seconds) of an M3 floating about on magic carpets of oversteer.

Nice, isn’t it. Now imagine a stubby hatchback that looks like a BMW careening off of the outside of the track, a slave to the twin FWD evils of understeer and torque steer. The alleged littlest Ultimate Driving Machine will be powered by a 1.5 liter 3-cylinder (exactly half of BMW’s famous 3.0 liter straight-six) that is stated to have “100 bhp [at the] bare minimum.”

I’ll leave you with this BMW ad mocking FWD. (If it’s too small to read, it says “That’s why we don’t have front wheel drives” near the bottom.)