How the hell is 400bhp 'underpowered'.
If he wants to see some underpowered cars, he ought to try buying something on a $15k limit. One would see some lovely pieces of work where you need to kiss the redline just to maintain 60 mph on a 5% uphill grade.
Yeah, I know it's not in the same realm as any sport sedan, but "BMW = underpowered cars" is not exactly a light assertion. Something like "{underpowered cars} /\ {BMW cars} != {0}", is at least livable, but you could say that about every manufacturer.
Its all about driver involvement, hell I find myself having to rein myself in with just 120bhp to play with.
Which is not much less than you might even get to use in most cases from a machine rated at a 600 peak hp. When people find a car underpowered, they're really talking about the power they actually get to use. In practice, hardly any car outside of a track test is pushed beyond 3000-3500 rpm, and even then, it'll typically be at <40% throttle -- just the peak before an upshift. For the average car in real-world driving, you're lucky to cross above 60 used engine hp... and of course, for many cars that will feel weak, and so the obvious answer is to buy something of greater horsepower.
Of course, the average car is also made for a soft ride, not exactly amazing handling and generally not focused on "enjoyable" to drive. And you can still make a 160 hp car enjoyable to drive (and Mazda does a great job on this). BMW does this on everything all the way from 400 hp down to 175 hp. To me, though, the most interesting thing that BMW does is that they don't limit new technological advancements (at least those which are generic in nature) to premium product lines. In many cases, they even bring it to the 3-series
first. That's something that can be a mixed blessing, sure, but it also means that when they really hit on something, it's available even in the "entry-level" product.
For all the people who are not seriously hitting the track every day who think they need 500 hp (and there are a lot of them), what they really want is more than 100. For that, you might as well get a 200 hp diesel or something -- you'll get more power in the range where you'd actually use the car, and you'll save a few thousand on fuel to boot. But of course, we all know the infinitely misguided stigma attached to diesel...
