BMW M Division CEO Frank van Meel has dropped the strongest hint yet that future M cars will be offered with optional all-wheel drive.
“They [M vehicles] are reaching the point where growing power outputs will oblige them to do something,” Van Meel said, according to Autocar.
“They’re still wedded to rear-wheel drive for philosophical reasons, but it’s already getting hard to sell them at 600 bhp-plus [447 kW-plus] in markets such as Canada and Switzerland,” added the former boss of Audi’s quattro division.
Van Meel, however, stressed that rear-wheel drive would remain the default configuration, and that any all-wheel-drive M products wouldn’t share the “xDrive” designation used on other BMW models.
“It wouldn’t be branded as xDrive. We have to be sensitive about equity built up with rear-wheel drive,” he said.
