The twelfth edition of Classic Car Club Manhattan‘s Gears on the Pier series focused on BMW’s M Power performance cars. ‘M’ was once known as BMW Motorsport, a subsidiary that developed race cars and homologation models for the brand. The collection of cars on display spanned nearly a half century of BMW top tier of driver focused cars. The east coast has always been a strong market for BMW and NYC owners filled CCC’s indoor garage and the outdoor parking pad.
The gathering skewed towards earlier decades before BMW’s current divisive design output. There was no shortage of clean lined E30s and a couple of amazing 2002s. The future existence of the M division was in doubt with BMW’s move towards electrification. But it will continue and predictions are that M EVs will outsell petrol models by 2028. It remains to be seen how BMW will differentiate M models in the electric transition beyond styling variants. They’ll have to do some serious engineering magic to work on weight reductions or advanced higher performance motors to better even standard EV driving abilities available today.
Photos and Text: Dave Pinter