Brighten My World

In the interest of responsible journalism, I must start this particular piece with a confession. All these years, I have been an irresponsible journalist, remiss in my duty to first fully investigate before in any way releasing written facts about my chosen subject matter. I have thus, for the past decade or so, been instrumental in misleading the public and creating the wrong impression about one of the most established car brands in the world.

Allow me to expound by going back to how and where it all started. As previously mentioned, I had been writing about cars as this publication’s motoring section editor for about ten years. Early on in my tenure, I was just as bright eyed and eager as just about any rookie would be. I thus swallowed all the preconceived notions about cars and their brand values. Among the unassailable truths that I embraced was that BMW was a carmaker driven by the need to excel in building the ultimate driving machines. Their brand value I as understood it, therefore, was pursuing excellent driving dynamics. I blindly embraced this as gospel truth and throughout my years as motoring section editor, I pounded this idea into our readers’ heads, often going as far as to give my writers pointers about highlighting this fact in their own individual articles.

And until very recently, I believed without a shadow of a doubt, that I was being but fair to the brand... and more especially to our readers. Until, that is, I found out that I had been the purveyor of lies. Well, that might be a bit too harsh. Let’s just say I spearheaded the proliferation of half truths.

A couple of weeks back, I accepted an invitation from ACC BMW, distributors of BMW vehicles in the country. The trip, it was explained to me, was meant to highlight the carmaker’s integrated thrust for a realistic sustainable mobility model which would be applied worldwide. It was to be held in Singapore (a country without a fully functional race track where simulations of real life applications for automotive technical innovations could be highlighted). In other words, considering this was a company purportedly put together to build ultimate driving machines, it sounded like a completely boring activity.

And, I must be honest, in a way it was. There were no long drives. There were no hard driving exercises. There were no activities that would challenge our inner race car drivers. It was admittedly boring. Until I realized that I had been missing out on the point... and that said point was staring me right smack in my face.

The invitation was and is important, because it was meant to teach clueless idiots like me that the brand values I had so vehemently pushed for the better part of a decade were woefully inaccurate. Yes, it’s true. BMW vehicles are indeed meant to be ultimate driving machines. They were built to perform better than any of their competitors. But that didn’t mean just on the tracks. BMWs were and are built to be better cars as far as the driving experience and actual real world efficiency are concerned.

To highlight this point, we were subjected to simple yet straightforward exercises that proved just how serious BMW is in making a difference in the world – at lessening their (and their buyers’) carbon footprint. It doesn’t take a genius, for example, to decipher that better driving dynamics (smoother response, more refined acceleration, seamless gear shifting, instantaneous response, etc.) leads to better fuel efficiency. And that’s exactly what the numbers showed for the new BMW 1Series, which was prominently featured during our exercises. The newer BMW models featured emit less carbon dioxide and consume up to 16 percent less fuel than their own previous engines.

The entire gamut was, in fact, laid down to us in a presentation that broke down just how each and every aspect of BMW’s automobile development program helps achieve the holistic goal of reducing carbon footprint. The pursuit of engine optimization, for example, yields better precision injection processes which in turn lead to better fuel burn. Intelligent energy management, meanwhile, leads to fuel optimizing processes like brake energy regeneration. Then there is the obsession with building lightweight frames, which of course also aids in fuel savings. Finally, there is the goal of constantly improving aerodynamics. Reducing one’s rolling resistance, of course, also helps in achieving better fuel numbers.

In other words, through a series of presentations and simple yet effective driving workshops, it was made clear to us that all of the effort meant to produce the ultimate driving machines were also pursuant to the goal of making the most efficient vehicles possible, given the current limitations we have, of course.

And so I go back to my preamble. I wholeheartedly apologize for all this time making it seem that BMWs are purely meant to be appreciated as performance cars. They are in fact performance cars. But they are performance cars meant to kill our guilt as well. So allow me to end this piece by stating an enlightened truth: In my book, BMW is an acronym that stands for Brighten My World. And that goes for every aspect of their vehicle development program.