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Originally Posted by heavyD^2
BMW went FWD because it was convenient with Mini Cooper FWD architecture in-house and they needed a vehicle to compete with Audi and MB in the entry level market. That's all, nothing more. Also too many people focus on the shining stars of the 80's (IMO the 2nd worst decade ever for automobiles after the 70's) and 90's conveniently forgetting how bad most vehicle handled and drove in those days. Entry level vehicles of today such as a Mazda 3 would drive circles around a lot of sporty models from the 90's. I owned a del sol VTEC in the 90's and while I appreciate the era before the beancounters took over Honda, the only thing memorable about that car was the B16A. The domestics in particular totally mailed in the 80's and 90's largely producing garbage that will not ever be missed.
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Well, I'm in my late 50's and been a car guy since I was 6 or so (my dad had q 1965 Mustang, Black over red with a 4 speed manual transmission, so how could I not be). I have good memory all cars from the mid 1970's through the mid 1990's quite well. When you say garbage, you are taking the cars out of context and prevailing market and economic factors. But there were plenty of good cars in the mid 1980's and into the early 1990's; you just can't take them out of context.
And of course a modern Mazda would drive circles around a car from the 1990's. The technology has advanced greatly in 20 years and so have economic conditions for affordability, let alone long-ass financing deals. Leasing has been a boon for the car industry and model un-diversification (my original point) as brought profitability. Not all cars were great in the 1980s thru the mid 1990's The E21 and E30 with the M10 were slower than dogshit (I drove both when they were new). The E30 really didn't wake up as a chassis until BMW put the M20B25 in 1988 in the USA market. The M20 ETA E30 was pathetic. The M42 318i of 1990 was decent, but a dog compared to the M20B25 version. The BMWs of that era handled good though and had great brakes despite not being very fast.
But back then BMW paid serious attention to weight balance. It was important enough that all their marketing materials showcased it, and every magazine article spent at least a paragraph on the subject. Any FWD hatchback of that era with a transverse drivetrain packed under the hood, could not handle like a BMW. Get one in the snow, and the things just rotated around the heavy frontend. All that is easily cured with traction control and stability control (all brought by an ABS module and torque control with 4WD), which as I remember it, Ford basically pioneered to keep the Explorer upright. The F30 and variants have barely any BMW DNA in the chassis. I've not yet driven the G20, the magazines say it is better.
You are right, BMW leverages the Mini for it's FWD architecture. It's hilarious now to hear BMW tout the packaging advantages of a FWD car that Sir Alec Issigonis figured out in the 1950s and every manufacturer besides BMW adopted over time. Even GM built large FWD cars as early as the mid 1960's. Yet, I remember vividly barely over a decade ago BMW touting it was
the only remaining manufacturer that did not compromise its vehicles by platform sharing like every other manufacture does. LOL, those ads are long gone in relevance. BMW in the 1970's and forward was adamant that a 50/50 weight-balance RWD platform was the "ultimate" handing machine. The E30 took on AWD to fight against Audi's mid-80's famous Quattro rally dominance and resultant marketing sales pitch. The E36 platform abandoned AWD, probably due to the expense of developing the front-drive.