Quote:
Originally Posted by hoefx
Sorry... I should have been more specific. I was talking just about the naming convention. I don't understand why they started calling the base 3.0L motor a 328 instead of 325 in the 3-series? They are already making a 125i hatch, so why are they going to call the coupe a 128i?
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It's all just a marketing scheme, at least in the US. x25, x28, x30, they are the same 3.0L N53 engines with varying degrees of tune. And by this I mean something as simple as different intake manifolds and different ECU coding.
Really, it should cost BMW next to nothing to upgrade x25 (210HP) to x28 (230HP) and to x30 (255HP). The R&D is all but done. The only reason that BMW intentionally detunes the N53, by killing the top end torque of an otherwise beautifully revving engine, is to have a pricing hierarchy.
So when BMW introduced the 335i one year after E90 debuted, with pricing that was only around $2K higher than the first year 330i, the only way to maintain a sensible two model lineup was to ditch both the 330i and the 325i. They couldn't make the 330i base model, since then the price of it will have to drop to low $30K, and that would've enraged the first year 330i owners who paid around $40K for theirs. They couldn't leave the 325i as the base, since the gap between the 325i and the 335i was just too big.
So they picked the middle number, 28, with a HP rating that is pretty much the average of the 325i and 330i, with the pricing that is also the average of the two. Pure marketing, nothing less, nothing more.
And of course the 1 is stuck with the same scheme with the 3, since BMW will not go for a three model line up for the 1, and the 128i is the only choice at this point for two model linup that includes the 135i.