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BMW's DTM champ swaps rides with Mini's Dakar winner

BMW may not race in F1 any longer, and it doesn't compete with Audi and Porsche in the LMP1 class at Le Mans. It even shut down Mini's short-lived effort on the World Rally Championship. But that doesn't mean it doesn't race at all. In fact it's the current reigning champion both in DTM and at Dakar. So to highlight its varied motorsport programs, the German automaker had two of its top drivers swap rides. German driver Martin Tomczyk, who won the DTM title in 2011 and now drives for BMW, took to Nasser Al-Attiyah's Mini All4Racing Countryman on the sand dunes of Dubai. Meanwhile the Qatari driver, who has won the Dakar Rally two times now, took to the wheel of Tomczyk's BMW M4 DTM around Oschersleben in Germany. They even repeated the game of musical chairs at Hockenheim over the weekend. If anything, the promo clip shot by Red Bull just goes to show how different the varied racing machinery can be, and the challenges posed to racing drivers switching between disciplines. But lessons aside, it's a cool clip, so check it out above. Two champions swap cockpits: Martin Tomczyk drives the MINI ALL4 Racing, Nasser Al-Attiyah the BMW M4 DTM. Munich (DE), 1st May 2015. From asphalt to sand and back again: BMW DTM driver Martin Tomczyk (DE) and MINI ALL4 Racing ace Nasser Al-Attiyah (QA) both entered unfamiliar territory and took each other's cars for a test drive. As part of a video shoot for BMW Motorsport Premium Partner Red Bull in Dubai (AE), Tomczyk, a proven master of his trade on asphalt as the 2011 DTM Champion, took the wheel of the MINI ALL4 Racing, with which X-raid has won the famous Rally Dakar the last four years. During DTM testing in Oschersleben (DE), Al-Attiyah was given the opportunity to drive Tomczyk's BMW M Performance Parts M4 DTM. Two wins at the Rally Dakar are just some of the successes the rally driver from Qatar has had to date. He followed up his first victory in 2011 by winning in the MINI ALL4 Racing in January 2015. "Driving the MINI ALL4 Racing through the sand and over the dunes in Dubai was a fascinating experience and was so much fun," said Tomczyk. "The car has an incredible amount of torwue – and the test in the dunes was an amazing adrenalin rush even for an experienced race driver such as myself. It's totally different to driving on a circuit.

BMW 3 Series set for mild facelift

The latest BMW 3 Series is pretty new, right? Well it's been on the market for the better part of three years now. And on a typical six-year production cycle, that means it's halfway through its life. It only makes sense, then, that BMW should be preparing a little mid-life facelift, and that's just what we appear to be looking at in these latest spy shots.
The changes will likely be minimal when the revised 3 Series debuts sometime in the middle of next year, with the visual changes to the exterior centering around a new front bumper. New lighting front and rear may also be part of the package, and you can also expect some updates to the interior while those Bavarian engineers are at it. Take a closer look in the gallery of high-res spy shots above for an idea of what to expect.

A look back on BMW, South Carolina and Southern manufacturing

It has been 20 years since BMW broke ground on its Spartanburg, SC manufacturing facility, and while the automaker doesn't have any plans to mark the moment, economists and industry analysts have taken a closer look at the facility's impact on South Carolina, the South and global manufacturing. As of November, the Spartanburg plant's 7,000 employees cranked out 25,000 vehicles per month, and BMW has poured some $6 billion into the state since the plant opened in 1993. While that figure nearly matches the state's proposed budget for next year, some say there have been drawbacks.
To begin with, South Carolina provided BMW with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of public money and tax breaks with little public oversight, setting a precedent that would repeat itself with other corporations. The Detroit News reports that a Pew Center evaluation found 26 states didn't have a sufficient system for evaluating tax incentive performance. But BMW opened the door for a Southern manufacturing renaissance, with automakers from Mercedes-Benz to Hyundai and Volkswagen opening plants in the Deep South.
While states have raced to offer ever sweeter tax and cash incentives for big manufacturers, officials say BMW is proof the system can pay dividends. You can read the full piece here.