This article has since been republished in an updated form on www.hooniverse.com
Once upon a time, BMW was very good at preserving its principles. The famously stubborn brand said it "would never sell a front wheel drive car", a promise first rescinded by using the MINI brand as a workaround, and the more brazenly with the MINI-base 2 Series Active Tourer. For a long while, there "would never be a turbocharged M car", owing to the fear of corrupting throttle response sharpness - though that fear, it turn out, was later quashed by twin-blown engines in the most recent M3 and M5.
BMW also once strenuously denied they’d ever put a folding hard-top on a Z4. A sports car didn’t need one, they said. With the 3-Series they had held off from folding hardtops until they found a way of packaging one effectively without it ruining the weight distribution.
They finally managed, but you have to assume that they worked some kind of witchcraft to fit one on the E89 Z4 without exchanging the original's no-frills premium for no-thrills tedium.
