Should BMW remain natural aspirated or non-aspirated? - The Unofficial BMW M5 Messageboard (m5board.com)

Black M5 · 20th January 2002, 23:20

Lately Mercedes have taken an aggressive approach and started supercharging most of their product lineup in order to compete for the king of the road in its categories. Horsepower figures have been going out the roof and now is the time for BMW to make a decision at this cross road. Natural or turbo/supercharging is the question?

Going non aspirated is a cheap way to gain horespower but stretching the engine more to get horsepower can result in loss of reliability. Now everyone will agree that there is still alot of room before BMW reaches its limit but someone will surely ask why go down that road if we can go turbo/supercharging and keep the prices down and reliability up.

Here is a poll and lets see what everyone thinks. Im sure BMW is keeping track of this website and their customers comments and will act accordingly. Oh one last thing, BMW GMBH please change your design becuase we all think you are taking the wrong path!

Barron · 20th January 2002, 23:37

BMW should stay NA due to reliability and driveability.

If they do go the forced induction route, PLEASE make it turbos and not superchargers. Those roots style blowers that Mercedes are using are WEAK on the top end, and require a good amount of HP to run (less efficient).

I would much rather see some low boost Turbos on top of the already great BMW enginers than a noisy inefficient blower.

The sweet sound of my M5 engine at 7000rpm is truly awesome...

Jonah

Black B10V8 · 21st January 2002, 00:14

BMW should give us the best performing engines at the most competitive cost. If this means turbo- or super charging, so what?

It would be great to have a powerful, torquey engine like the SL55's in the e39.

For my kind of driving (long distance, high mileage on European roads), the high torque and wide power band characteristics of a large displacement supercharged engine would be perfect.

It is such a shame that Alpina have gone soft. A 4,6 litre twin turbo with 500 hp would also do it.

I doubt that BMW monitors and/or cares about this board, but it would be great if they did.

alpywhite · 21st January 2002, 00:41

NA way more impressive. I could get into the whole CART/IRL vs. F1 thing here...

tfung · 21st January 2002, 00:45

Black,
I don't think there is such a thing as non-aspirated... all engines have to be aspirated somehow... but either natural aspirated or artificially aspirated (forced induction)... can't be no aspiration at all.....

But anyhow, I think BMW should stay NA... leave the supercharging and turbocharging to tuners..

IvanDias · 21st January 2002, 01:21

I want a normally aspirated engine, no Turbo or Supercharger.

But, I believe that they (BMW) will be forced (pun!) to go down this route, as this will be a cheaper alternative to trying to get the existing engines to run reliably AND produce the figures that MB and others will come up with in the next few years.

With so many powerful engines and cars around, the new M5 in 2004/5/6/whatever is going to be hard pushed to retain the legendary status of the E28/E34/E39 variants, short of either putting some crazy McLaren F1 engine or detuned BMW Williams V10/V12 unit in, or going the Turbo/Super route.

My 2 cents. Err...Euros. No. Cents.

Ivan.

M5Phil · 21st January 2002, 01:26

Barron,

AMG Supercharged vehicles do not use roots type they use the
new Lyscholm type (helical supercharger) from IHI normally
running about 15Psi of boost they are strong as crazy !!!!
My little V6 Gets me 298 HP at the wheel and 287 Torque !!!

Then again nothing beats pure NA power also gives you more
to play with so GO BMW !!!! If MB Could produce that sort
of power from NA it would be just plain AMAZING !

As for reliability so far for me at least no problems at all !! And
dont expect anything long term, they strenghtened the engine
very well.

Black M5 · 21st January 2002, 01:33

TFUNG,

I know i meant natural aspirated vs. non nautural aspirated...i wrote non aspirated for abrevation

M5Laser · 21st January 2002, 01:51

If they can do a good job at it, then do it!!

Look at the S4... nice twin turbos on the V6 gives it a nice 250hp. And this is easily 'chippable' to turn out some rather impressive numbers.

Imagine BMW coming out with a turbocharged V8 that pushes out 400hp... you could chip that to probably over 500hp. Not too shabby

I love the BMW NA engines now, but I think that BMW should do what they have to do. I think Mercedes is getitng a lot closer these days with the staight line power (maybe not cornering or road feel though), so BMW should up the anty (sp?) a bit!

MEnthusiast · 21st January 2002, 02:54

While these are all impressive- the I6 engine of the M5 makes nearly 100hp more without turbos.

I vote to stay normally aspirated and I also vote for the next M5 and M6 to have the 550bhp/ ~500 ftlb V10 that I hear might be coming our way