2002 Bmw Z3 3.0i Sportscar Convertible Southern California on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Formula Drift kicks off 11th season on Streets of Long Beach

The 2014 Formula Drift series kicked off last weekend in Long Beach, and saw Chris Forsberg, who you'll recall went mad and drifted around a warehouse in an Infiniti M, take the title behind the wheel of his Hankook Tire Nissan 370Z (shown above).
Forsberg really ran away with the first round of competition, outscoring his closest opponent, second-place finisher Kenneth Moen and his Bridges Racing Nissan 240SX, by 20 points. Third place was 2013 championship winner Michael Essa and his Yokohama BMW M3, 30.5 points behind Forsberg.
In the manufacturers' title, Nissan took an early lead with 122 points, which isn't a huge surprise considering five of the top ten drifters were piloting either a Z or a product of the brand's S platform. Ford, which had two drivers (Justin Pawlak and Vaughn Gittin, Jr.) in the top ten, took home second place, while BMW is currently third in the manufacturers' standings.

2015 BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe

It's hard to say what a coupe is anymore. Is it merely a car with two doors? Does it have to have an arching roofline? Do frameless windows count for anything? Can a five-door hatchback or even an SUV be a coupe? At some point in the last few years, nearly everything we thought made a coupe a coupe has been challenged by something that calls itself a coupe, but to most people isn't. Our friends at BMW have led most of this line of questioning.
The new 2015 BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe is one of the latest Bimmers to challenge the moniker (which also challenges the idea of "Gran," for that matter), and unlike some of its other "coupe" variations - we're looking at you, X6 - this one is a pretty one. The 4 Series Gran Coupe is essentially a four-door version of the 4 Series, which is itself a two-door version of the 3 Series. Huh? Wouldn't that simply make it another 3 Series? Of course, but this one is prettier, as it uses the 4's sexier body styling, with its lower nose, wider-looking stance and edgier lighting graphics. It is also technically a five-door hatchback, not a sedan per se, and it utilizes frameless side door glass, which apparently does count for something in BMW coupe-land. Significantly, the 4 Gran Coupe's wheelbase is identical to the two-door; if it was longer - as is the case with the 3 Series and 5 Series hatchbacks - that might make it a "Gran Turismo." Confused yet?
We recently got our first chance to drive the 4 Series Gran Coupe at a press launch in Spain, and while the only version we were given was a rear-drive 428i Gran Coupe with the M Sport contents, the harrowing roads around Bilbao gave us a good idea of what this car is all about from a driving dynamics standpoint. Here's some of what we found:

This Or That: 1980 Oldsmobile 442 vs. 1989 BMW 635CSi [w/poll]

The last time I roped a coworker into an automotive debate, I lost. Resoundingly, I might add. Still, 2,385 voters chose to cast their lots for the Fiat 500 Abarth, as opposed to 5,273 choosing the Ford Fiesta ST, and so I can rest easy in the knowledge that at least 30 percent of you, dear readers, see things my way. I still like to think we have more fun, too.
My loss in the first round of our This or That series, in which two Autoblog editors pick sides on any given topic and then attempt to explain why the other is completely wrong, didn't stop me from picking another good-natured fight, this time with Senior Editor Seyth Miersma. Last time, our chosen sides were eerily similar in design, albeit quite different in actual execution. This time, our vehicular peculiarities couldn't seemingly fall any further from one another: A 1980 Oldsmobile 442 wouldn't seem to match up in comparison to a 1989 BMW 635CSi.
How did we come up with such disparate contenders? Simple, really. Seyth and I mutually agreed to choose a car that's currently for sale online. It had to be built and sold in the 1980s, and it had to be a coupe. The price cap was set at $10,000. The fruits of our searching labors will henceforth be disputed, with Seyth on the side of the Germans, and myself arguing in favor of the Rocket Olds. Am I setting myself up for another lopsided loss?