A new direction as BMW goes front-wheel-drive

David Booth looks at what the decision will mean for the future of the German car manufacturer.

The chairman of the board of management of BMW AG, Dr Norbert Reithofer, announced the change to front-wheel-drive cars.

Maybe I am mistaken. Maybe, in years hence, this latest news from BMW will not be seen as a seismic shift in the fortunes of a great company. Perhaps, I, like so many other car enthusiasts, overestimate the importance of performance and engineering. It might even answer the age-old question - at least in automotive terms - of which is more important; style or substance? The big news? According to chairman of the board of management, Dr Norbert Reithofer, BMW, for the first time in its history, is going to start selling front-wheel-drive cars.

Yup, the purveyor of the Ultimate Driving Machines, the company that fairly invented the concept of the performance sedan, will switch - or, more accurately, add to - its product portfolio the powertrain format it has for so long derided. For long-time aficionados of Germany's most successful luxury brand, this may not quite be the apocalypse, but the locusts are certainly getting thick on the ground.

For, if there's anything that has defined the BMW brand, it's been the delicacy, the precision, indeed the very completeness of the handling built into every car that wears the spinning propeller. BMW's steering precision is the standard by which all are judged, a tribute mentioned in virtually every 3 Series road test and the very core of the company's brand. A BMW without its fine-handling chassis is just a Lexus without the anvil-like reliability.

And, while the front-wheel-drive format has many laudable attributes - better traction in the winter, superior fuel economy and a more efficient packaging layout (a definitive advantage in light of BMW's continued use of its silky smooth but largish in-line six-cylinder engine) - it is hardly conducive to superior roadholding. Burdening the front wheels with the task of transmitting all that power as well as steering inevitably results in the front-driver's classic understeer, anathema to sporty handling.

BMW's decision to move into the front-wheel-drive arena will no doubt outrage its core constituency (remember the hue and cry from Porscheophiles when the Cayenne was introduced?), but it does ask some very important questions. Is performance an actual saleable attribute or is it, as so many cynics postulate, just a marketing ploy? Do any of us really need a BMW's superior handling? Indeed, how many typical BMW owners ever use even a smidgen of their cars incredible ability? Is high performance, like the overdeveloped musculature of the steroided bodybuilder, just for show?

The answer, at least in BMW terms, depends on how you read the tea leaves. BMW, for instance, is encouraged in its decision to build smaller cars in FWD guise by a recent survey that revealed that 80 per cent of current 1 Series owners did not know that their car was rear drive. The inference - that if they don't know their car is rear-wheel drive then they won't miss the format's inherent handling advantage - is seen by BMW as a green light to build front-drivers.

Of course, that insight could be fraught with peril as well. If, indeed, 80 per cent of your customers can't even recognise your very raison d'être, then as the critics decry, you've reduced performance to a mere marketing ploy, an attribute to trot out for your advertisements and be mythified by auto journalists but of no use to your typical customer. So Reithofer's recent and rather anodyne announcement, hidden deep in a rambling long-winded discussion on the future of BMW, ends up asking a deep (or, at least as deep as questions get in the automotive world) philosophical question. Which is more important; perception or reality?

Engineers and enthusiasts, ever ideologues, will, of course, posit that little else matters other than a car's abilities. Marketers will argue, more cynically, that as long as customers perceive a performance advantage, the reality doesn't matter. Indeed, they might further assert that the only purpose of BMW's performance superiority is having a hard-core of enthusiasts to convince the vast majority - who will never use their cars abilities - that they are indeed projecting the right image.

The problem, of course, is that the hardcore minority might stop believing your hype. Wander too far from your core values, say the realists, and eventually your cynical ways will erode the very brand image so carefully crafted over many years. Bah, humbug, say the marketers, noting that the aforementioned 911 owners' threat of mutiny over the introduction of the Cayenne sport-utility vehicle didn't hurt Porsche's sales one little bit. [e-mail]