"It pounces on corners, tracks flat through the apexes, and devours the straights with a burly snarl from the V-8. It laps up freeway kilometers at triple-digit speeds, the suspension digesting ripples and dips so thoroughly that the body remains almost inert. All the driver has to do is aim the 645 and it goes there. Fast." Sounds great, right? Absolutely, except for the fact that it isn't about this 640i. Keen BMW fans would probably be fast to note that this 640i doesn't even come with a V8. The above is fro m a review of a 645Ci that was published back in January 2004, 12 years ago. This new review , though, was.. let's be kind and say less flattering. As seems to be a pattern now for all BMW's, except the 2-series and M models, there's lots of disappointment. "Our car, equipped with BMW’s M Sport package, offered what seemed to be a slathering of faux sportiness." It only managed 0.86 g on Car and Driver's 300-ft
BMW M2 equipped with an eLSD - BMW © A few weeks ago, I posted about traditional clutch-type limited slip diffs (LSD's) and how they work. You can read about those in the previous post: How Limited Slip Diffs Make You Faster on Track . But as you might know or have learned from reading the article, they aren't without their faults, which means engineers are always working to get around those limitations. You may not be surprised to learn that something like the Ferrari 488 GTB doesn't use a traditional limited slip diff, but it's not limited to super cars, far from it. Cars like the Golf GTI, the Civic Type R, various Mustangs, Corvettes, and BMW M cars, and even the Lexus RC F and GS F, all avoid a traditional limited slip diff in favour of one of these technologies. To keep things simple, I'll focus on two wheel drive vehicles. The vast (vast) majority of principles apply to all and 4 wheel drive vehicles, but there are some subtle differences that I'll