Peterson BMW

Chris Harris of EVO Magazine  has the first review of a pre-production 2012 BMW M5. DCT has been confirmed! No horsepower output confirmed as of now.

Technical highlights

Twin turbochargers, with unspecific modifications to both intake and exhaust systems. Official response to the question of power output is: ?Do you really think we would give it less than an X6M??. An X6M has 547bhp. There?s a seven-speed DCT dual clutch transmission with three different shift speeds and a fully automatic mode. Saloon only for now.

What?s it like to drive?

Is turbocharging a highlight? When it makes a car this flexible and plain accelerative, it has to be. Yes, the near-insanity of the old V10 makes way for slightly reduced throttle response, but it?s marginal. On a Swedish lake, you can still make tiny adjustments to sustain that all-important 1km drift. Does it feel turbocharged? A little bit. Does it make enough induction noise? No. But this isn?t the finished car, the BMW M-gurus insist that the final product will be different in this respect.

I only drove the car on snow, ice and the occasional patch of asphalt. It felt like an M-car in the correct sense: purposeful, but not too aggressive. The steering, chassis and powertrain each have three modes: comfort, sport and sport-plus, giving a myriad of options. The MDM (M Driving Mode) brings a higher threshold DSC intervention that requires steering correction from the driver, or you spin, It works brilliantly. Switch it all off and you have a circa 560bhp, rear-wheel-drive saloon with an LSD. If you can?t enjoy that, you?re a wally.

I can?t tell you much about ride comfort and steering yet, except that with the suspension set to comfort the car is compliant but never soft. The steering is faster than in a regular BMW 5-series.

Full review at EVO Magazine

Nashville, TN ? Dataium, LLC, an automotive buyer behavior analytics company, released its Promotional Impact Charts (PIC) for Super Bowl automotive advertisers. The company measured shopping, inventory search, and lead activity of over 3 million active auto shoppers during the Super Bowl, at the precise times each of the automotive manufacturers' television spots were broadcast. The resulting statistics clearly indicate BMW's Super Bowl commercials delivered the greatest impact for their local dealerships. It should be noted that in every instance, but Hyundai, commercials that ran prior to kickoff, generated better performance metrics for their respective local dealership websites, than those commercials that ran during the game.

As expected, the Super Bowl's impact on overall online auto shopping was negative, with a -24% decline in shopper activity at the start of the game, but online shopping returned to pregame activity levels during halftime. After halftime activity declined dramatically, down -42% by the game's final tick of the clock. Overall inventory search volume declined -23%, while lead volume actually increased 2.65% during the game. For the week following the Super Bowl, Monday through Saturday, all performance metrics remained down when compared to a typical non-Super Bowl week.

So do Super Bowl ads stem the tide or perhaps deliver gains in auto shopper activity for those manufacturers who advertise during the game? No, there was no appreciable variance in auto shopper behavior for those brands that advertised than for those that did not. Consumer shopping behavior seems to be more impacted by the game itself than the ads within it. However, much of the goal of Super Bowl advertising is to build brand recognition and definition rather than generate website traffic and lead volume.

"It was exciting for our team to watch the Super Bowl commercials on one monitor and watch consumers response on another," stated Eric Brown, CEO of Dataium, "with the real-time auto shopper activity data we collect, for the first time we can see the impact of national advertising initiatives by the OEMs on the local dealership showroom."

A full report of Promotional Impact Charts (PIC) for each automotive Super Bowl commercial is available upon request at dataium.com/contact. The report includes performance statistics by make and model, comparative statistics of auto buyer behavior pre-Super Bowl and post Super Bowl, as well as, keyword usage trends, and more. Custom reports are also available by request.