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Originally Posted by DDS2015
I have been wondering the same thing...
Also, who cares that this weighs so much more than its competition than the XK, it weighs only slightly more than the Maserati, which is a much newer car than the Jag.
With all of those safety features though the car will end up by weighing a lot. I mean, it has something like 10 or 12 airbags? that alone will add a stupid amount of weight. Don't forget about the 20-way adjustable seats that weigh several hundred pounds each I'm sure (I don't know the exact value). Also theres probably 5 cows worth of leather in each car, which is by no means light.
IMO though, I'd rather have the car weigh a little more. Yes, you sacrifice handling to a certain extent, but the car feels more solid, and if you get into an accident, having that extra weight sure is nice. Also, I am willing to bet that the M6 will weigh in at under 4000 pounds though. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that they could shave 400-500 pounds off of this.
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The "problem" is that BMW uses more high-strength steel in their cars than the majority of their competitors. Audi uses far more aluminum, so all the latest directly competing Audis and BMWs favor the Audi on the weight side of things, despite the fact that they have AWD.
I don't think it will be easy to shave 400-500lbs off of a car like this when converting it to an M variant. I'm not trying to sound like a pessimist, but when you use fatter tires, bigger brakes, a bigger engine, etc, you tend to weight more. I can't think of an M variant that weighs less than the regular models they're based on.
The
good news is that the high-strength steel makes these cars tank-like during crashes. The new Bimmers are ranking highly in crash safety tests.
Also, this is the convertible. The F12 coupe should weigh just a hair over 4,000lbs, which gives me more hope that BMW might be able to get the M variant south of the two-ton mark with liberal use of lightweight materials.