OT: BMW's new letter

[we_call_him_doher]

Did you guys hear? BMW is gonna drop the "E" in body style names and replace it with "F" for all future models. So the next 7 will be F01 and the next 5 will be F10. Just an interesting tidbit....

Also, has anyone seen any pictures of the new 5 or 7? How do they look?

[Traian]

I think they'll also be calling their vans V-. It's all rather confusing really.

[SRR2]

Good thing they started at 01. Otherwise their first in the new series would have been the FOO. I'm sure everyone couldn't wait to buy a new FOO. It's also a good thing that they decided to stay with only a two-digit numeric designation. If they'd gone to three, the first one would have been a FOOl, and we already have enough fools around.

But there may still be a problem: FO5 Uh-oh. Probably an all-Bangle on LSD design.

[Incantation]

lol

[E34-520iSE]

Just hope the new F01 doeesn't become a Fo11Y!

Cheers,

Shaun

[DanDombrowski]

I think the idea is that they want more brand recognition than model recognition.

Lincoln and Ford are doing it as well. Everyone knows what the 'Navigator' is, all the soccer moms want one. But who is Lincoln? Kinda like that, at least thats what I think they're trying to get away from.

Rather than rappers referring to the Seven forty fizzle, I think they want the name BMW to appear.

[wingman]

Rather than rappers referring to the Seven forty fizzle, I think they want the name BMW to appear.

WTF are you talking about??? Please translate:(

[Torque]

WTF are you talking about??? Please translate:(I read his post 3 times and I couldn't figure it out either.

[bahnstormer]

are both of u old and white? lol

[Jay 535i]

Did you guys hear? BMW is gonna drop the "E" in body style names and replace it with "F" for all future models. So the next 7 will be F01 and the next 5 will be F10. Just an interesting tidbit....

Also, has anyone seen any pictures of the new 5 or 7? How do they look?

I've seen pics of the new 7, in CAR magazine, I think. It looks as you'd expect: like a current 7 but less interesting and more bloated. Kind of a cross between a current 7 and an Audi A8. It didn't get me very excited. After all this time the current 7's looks have grown on me, and to me the new one looks too conservative.

And it doesn't look very BMW. Take away the Hoffmeister kink and the kidney grille and it could be anything.

[JohnC]

WTF are you talking about??? Please translate:(
i think hes talking about the model number themselves and not the chassis codename.

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

Ride my Five two Fizzle to go pick up some ho's, forties and cap some some ricer on da way...Love dat B M Wizzle....peace out

[clhorton]

OK to sum it up he is saying instead of saying 745 and 525. The companies are wanting to get people to recognize their vehicles by the brand and not model. But I still don't really see how that ties in to changing the E to F. If a person is not a Bimmer enthusiast they are not going to call our cars an e34, theyll call it 525, 535, 540, etc...... The only people that will notice this change will be us bimmer nuts.

[ryan roopnarine]

OK to sum it up he is saying instead of saying 745 and 525. The companies are wanting to get people to recognize their vehicles by the brand and not model. But I still don't really see how that ties in to changing the E to F. If a person is not a Bimmer enthusiast they are not going to call our cars an e34, theyll call it 525, 535, 540, etc...... The only people that will notice this change will be us bimmer nuts.

i've wanted to comment on this for two days now, but the board was out after 4p yesterday. the reason why it matters is because it indicates a change in direction, enthusiasts can follow it or come to a hault, what have you.... same with mercedes not using the prefix W for all of their vehicles anymore (like our e's, a 1995 S600 is mercedes W140, like a 1994 750il is a e32). only enthusiasts would notice the change, but that doesnt matter to mercedes or bmw, they attach intangible changes in attitude and such to the letter change, and change the scheme for that reason.

quote-----seven forty fizzle...what the hell did you just say----endquote.

i went to a ghetto high school, and as a result, my musical tastes were influenced by such. not to say that i really like rap all that much...but it influences what i find asthetically pleasing.
if you read fark.com or some other type of news of the weird aggregating site, you'll see a number of articles from the past few months discussing the image problems the high end car companies feel they have with hip hop co-opting their product lines for songs and such. bentley, for example, is (effectively) horrified that their clientele has changed so much in the last few years, from the 50ish professionals traditional to their brand used to court, to rappers/wannabe rappers/et cetera, and is setting out to deal with the "problem" they perceive. another article mentions the number of times car brands/product lines are mentioned in rap songs more than others (relatively), and find that mercedes is the most popular brand name-dropped in rap songs right now. other articles have come up, i will be brief(er) and not recall them. to boil it down to what dan was saying, there is a great deal of the populus that can identify vehicles only by their model, and not their make. no ostentatious rapper is going to talk about driving a lincoln, but referring directly to the navigator or excursion avoids sounding like someone bragging about a ford. many rappers have reduced the bentley product line down to only "a bentley" or a rolls royce to "rolls royce" or "phantom", and many people only know of the existence of such as such....which gets back to the people that can actually afford them, and pisses them off. listen to any rap radio station, an you'll hear references to

600--which means mercedes benz s600
500-- '' 500 (no rapper is going to say this now
but tupac, et al. referred to
this around
1995ish or so)
seven forty fizzle-- 745
quarter to eight-- 745
phantom-- rolls royce phantom
ack-- (see note about mr. shakur), Acura
vigor-- (above) acura vigor
seven-- seven series, usu. 745 or above
six-- either MB s600 or the new 6 series BMW


i can't be bothered to remember any to any other unique ones, usually they will say something obvious like "benz" or "beamer" (sic).

take a look at the vehicle listed in my vehicle profile. 1999 mercedes benz s700 v14. this came from a song from 1999 called "bling bling", which had a lyric which said "i got a special built machine, mercedes benz 700 v14, know you (expletives) can't believe that....." note the use of them including (mercedes benz) in the lyric, knowing that no one would know what they were referring to if that wasn't included. i consider this song to be a novelty song (as does everyone i know), as later, it referrs to someone trying putting 20' rims on an airplane. when i first heard it, i thought it was a thoroughlly amusing affair, as there was an acknowledgement that the people in it were being facetious, and the insanity of the things being suggested were "insane" in their creativity of the crap they were singing about at the time(ie, adding a litre to the displacement of an s600 as well as 2 extra cylinders to create a vehicle no one else could possibly have) . i'll still listen to it if it comes onto the radio. the unfortunate side effect of this song is a bunch of *******s coming out of the woodwork, singing about crap like this in all seriousness, in 20 or 30 iterations. i know that most 40-50 yr olds have heard the term "bling" before, so it has had its effect.

long story short. these changes refer not to any new seven series, or MB or such, but a completely global change in the way that higher end automobiles--their product lines in particular, want to be marketed (to eliminate the aforementioned influences). just adding triple digits to the
e numbers would not do this, something more far reaching needed to be done.


damn, the scroll button got small. i wonder where all the crap i typed came from.

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

Talk'n bout....Crackas

[Jay 535i]

OK to sum it up he is saying instead of saying 745 and 525. The companies are wanting to get people to recognize their vehicles by the brand and not model.

I think that's backwards, actually.

Generally speaking, over the last decade or so, car makers have gone away from names towards numbers. Some early 1990s polling showed that a car called "RL" was perceived to be more premium than one called "Legend", and so forth.

There are exceptions, of course. Ferrari and Porsche are two (no more 928, 911, 355 and F50 -- we now have the Cayenne, Carerra, Modena and Enzo), but then those brands hardly have any trouble convincing buyers that they're premium.

Interestingly BMW has had some success doing both. That is, they get the 'premium' association by calling a car 745, yet the "7-series" is a powerful brand in its own right. Chalk that up to decades of consistent marketing.

In the end, I think no one will care, and I think that's what BMW hopes, too. Those model designations, while posessing some esoteric appeal, mean diddly-squat to BM's bottom line, and that's all they care about. I think they just ran out of numbers. :)

Now, just for fun, what would be possible replacements for the 3, 5 and 7 monikers? My suggestions:

3-series: Tadpole. There'd be the Tadpole 1.8, Tadpole 2.5 and so on, culminating in the stupendous M-Tadpole.

5-series: Aardvark. You'd have your Aardvark 3.0 and Aardvark 4.5, obviously, but then there'd also be the Ferrari-chasing M-Aardvark and the practical Aardvark Touring, now called the Aardvark Rucksack.

7-series: Orca (especially fitting with a new two-tone black & white paint scheme I've developed). Among your basic Orca 3.0 and Orca 4.5 are the long-wheelbase Orca Jumbo and diplomat-spec Orca Fuhrer. Sadly, there is no M-Orca, as they are overprone to beaching themselves.

Got others?

[CharlesAFerg]

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=108559#3

I read it would be a "Smaller, sportier 7."
Um...Isn't that the 5 and 6 lol...

Oh well, I still like the '05 760li better.

http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/il/features/future/09.bmw.7.series/09.bmw.7series.r34.500.jpg

http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/il/features/future/09.bmw.7.series/09.bmw.7series.f34.500.jpg


LOL! I also found this... (Anyone else think this looks like a photoshop Honda S2000?)

http://media.autobild.de/bild/0/84dcd94a1203e7ec2b0a000816cd6c80_1.jpg



[img]http://media.autobild.de/bild/E/9819d5f4229ea06a3d97a1a3fde28d2e_1.jpg

[632 Regal]

so if it changed to an "N" series could the 8s turn into N008's

[CharlesAFerg]

so if it changed to an "N" series could the 8s turn into N008's

Lawl...
:p

[Gayle]

Ryan

Thanks for the extensive explanation. Those of us who truly are old and white (not your description) appreciate having popular culture interpreted to us, because we can't get it on our own. I really love the diversity of things that I learn about on this site.

.

[SRR2]

Ok, then, so who do you think will be the first to call one of their models "The orange"?