Development of the E92 M3 CSL Cancelled!

See here... shame.

It was about a month ago when despite all the spy shots were taken (e.g. below) that BMW’s Chief of Development, Herr Klaus Draeger confirmed that there will be no new M3 CSL.

I think people suspected that it may have been a standard decoy tactic.
However, for Ludwig Willisch (head of ///M) to agree closes the book on it.

Bravo73 wrote: [QUOTE=kbannon] If the e92 CSL does come out, I can assure you that it will look nothing like that!

Why you work for Motorsport?
...

Fooljam wrote: Why you work for Motorsport?

No. But the CAR artists have always been wrong with their 'impressions'. It's just very poor journalism in order to stimulate magazine sales. ("Oooh, I must buy it to see the pictures of the new CSL" etc etc).

(If you want, we can even go through the artist's thought processes - take an M3, cut and paste some carbon splitters and inlet from an e46 CSL, cover it in carbon fibre and give it a tii paintjob - ta da!)

Good, I'm glad they've cancelled it. The whole power war thing was just
getting stupid - let Merc and Audi play silly games and out-do each
other. Super fast cars are becoming more and more pointless and less
socially acceptable - cars like the 123d are the way forward.

Yes.

M3's used to have four cylinders and 200 bhp which was considered
enough. Time to go back to that I think. Cars like the M5 and M6 just
don't have a future when even the Germans are considering speed
limiting the last unrestricted Autobahns.

MBW1 wrote: Yes. M3's used to have four cylinders and 200 bhp which was considered enough. Time to go back to that I think. Cars like the M5 and M6 just don't have a future when even the Germans are considering speed limiting the last unrestricted Autobahns.

I have to say while I don't agree cars like the 123d are the way forward, I do agree that ever increasingly powerful and complicated (not to mention heavy) cars are becomming something of an irrelevance.

Given the choice between and E39 M5 and an E60 M5 I would choose the older car in the blink of an eye. There is absolutely no need to have over 500bhp in a saloon car for the simple fact that in all but a professional race drivers hands the only thing keeping them on the road if it ever looks like rain is the electronics. Add to this that there is nowhere you can really every drive them hard exept a track and if you wanted to go on a track you would buy something smaller and lighter.

The M3 CSL has a bit more relevance on a race track but I'm still not convinced it is needed and I certainly don't think BMW need to make it. I bet the bulk of BMWs customers have never heard of an M3 CSL and car comapnies have certainly never been that fussed about keeping the 'enthusiasts' happy, at least not in today's economic climate.

I had both a CSL (the original) , an M3 Sport Evolution 2.5 and a 3.8 M5
E34 back in the day. The E36 M3 was a very good car, the E46 just as
much so but I've not enjoyed the ones I've driven so much. They feel so
heavy. Both this and the E46 CSL are fast of course, but nothing that
some snotty kid in a chipped up old £5000 Skyline can't deal with. Ultra
high performance cars are just on a hiding to nothing and full marks to
BMW if they throw in the towel and concentrate on more relevant cars
such as the 1 Series the learned Mr Bravo speaks of.

In this age of spiralling fuel costs and increasingly draconian anti-car
legislation, I've found of late that cars like the 123d and the Alpina B3
have given me a lot of enjoyment without the need to go stupidly fast - I
guess I've grown out of it.

who needs one anyway? 420bhp not enough?? only 10% of drivers can handle such a car without electronics anyway. And what's about the servicing cost? They can't do any work on these new cars anyway, but still manage to get the bill up to four digits.
I would rather have a 250bhp M3, lightweight and nimble with 40mpg!

Some interesting points in this thread. Here are few thoughts of mine without wishing to annoy anyone. Yes the UK market is heading in a different direction but you've got to remember there are many places in the world where high bhp cars are defiantly on the agenda for a lot of people. If there is a profit in it for BMW they'll defiantly do it. Also fuel is ridiculous in the UK in the Middle East there are no 316/318 cars, most are very much higher cc's. Plus if you are buying one of these cars new (M3/M5's) you aren't going to want to have anything that is perceived as weedy. Now for the enthusiast that is completely the wrong mentality i.e. I need my cock to be bigger than my mates AMG cock but never the less it exists. Perhaps the number of high BHP cars in the UK will decrease with the number lighter less bhp being more popular but there is always going to be higher and higher powered M cars.

I have to say that modern M's are great cars for what they are, there is meatiness to them that is satisfying, the lighter earlier cars are no doubt brilliant at what they do as well. I just wonder if BMW will ever be able to get the same feeling with the inevitable safety requirements. The CSL theme is perhaps the closest we'll get (1 series even lighted is still gong to be heavier than a e30) so all in all I would be disappointed if they didn't make a CSL with a stupid power output because 5 years down the line I think the thought of ownership, possibly as a second car would be quite attractive even to us as enthusiasts.