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Originally Posted by Bogie  I mean only that the 63 engine, as found in the ML/S/SL/etc. will smoke the M3 and S4... and E63 and S8 and so on...
Do BMW, MB and Audi all have an agreement that they will not unleash the full mercy of their most powerful engines in their smaller cars? If so, and one of them ever decided to violate such an agreement, he would win!... That's what Porsche is known for. In fact, it is my opinion that Porsche is the reason we have our super powered SUVs. When Porsche announced that they were developing the Cayenne (several years before it's production), both MB and BMW worked feverishly to put out their super SUVs first. It was sort of like fighting to temporarily claim a newly discovered throne, knowing that the real king was on his way. Every SUV before that time could be characterized as sluggish and unstable. Of course, this no longer applies, since the new ML63 is in the same power class as the Cayenne TT. Now the real battle for the throne begins.
Just my thoughts... not necessarily so. |
i hope you don't take my comments as argumentative or personally to put your ideas down, but really, you need to look into the car business no different than any other business. I have a best friend that I debate with all the time and I tell him always to get his facts straight and pay attention to detail before he argues a point, so no offense intended.
First off, you are right they had a special agreement MB, Audi, BMW to not go over certain performance numbers
Manufacturers may lift 155-mph limits - Autoblog
Japanese companies have similar restrictions but I understand that is because of local laws.
If you solely think that the cars are about strictly competing against each other's performance spcs, then why does not all car buyers end up buying the Corvette ZO6?
There is a lot more detail that compels someone to buy a particular product aside from choosing the one that does a 1/4 mile .03 secs faster than the other. The car manufacturers have ranked their own priorities towards how much emphasis they put into the product to accurately target their niche market. They take a gamble on what they believe their target market would prefer and have their car sell more than the closest competing product on the market. It's not just the performance number as you see in the example above.
Some companies such as Ferrari know majority of their customers buy their car simply because it is a ferrari, and they time and time again post lower performance numbers than something like a Porsche (excluding supercars like Enzo, F50 etc. which are their pride to try the best and prove they have theh best). MB also considers the fact that some will only buy it because it's an MB, and not to lose their loyal base due to sluggish performance numbers, they also compete in a close chase to the performance gain. This was evident when Mercedes started losing market share to Lexus when they made better performing more bang for the buck cars in the late 80's. The Lexus Ls460 was 10 years ahead of its time. Lexus worked heavily not to develop a new luxury large sedan buyer market, but to chip away at Mercedes' large marketshare. BMW also attacked them on the mid sized market with the M5. Mercedes fought back and teamed up with porsche on the 500E.