2016 Bmw 4-series 435i Gran Coupe on 2040-cars

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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 2 Series to wear 230i, M240i nameplates

BMW might not be done tweaking its naming scheme quite yet. Of course, at this point, the jumble of numbers on the back of the Bavarian models has no connection to what's under the hood. So there's not much reason to stop changing the monikers now.
As Autoblog reported a few months ago, BMW is slotting upgraded, turbocharged four- and six-cylinder engines called the B48 and B58, respectively, into the 3 and 4 Series. If this happens, the 328i/428i would become the 330i/430i, and the 335i/435i would turn into the 340i/440i.
Obviously, this change hasn't happened yet, but the same member of 2Addicts, a portion of the larger Bimmerpost community has now claimed that the 228i and M235i would get the same treatment. They would become the 230i and M240i, respectively, with the new engines.

The next-generation wearable will be your car

This year's CES has had a heavy emphasis on the class of device known as the "wearable" – think about the Apple Watch, or Fitbit, if that's helpful. These devices usually piggyback off of a smartphone's hardware or some other data connection and utilize various onboard sensors and feedback devices to interact with the wearer. In the case of the Fitbit, it's health tracking through sensors that monitor your pulse and movement; for the Apple Watch and similar devices, it's all that and some more. Manufacturers seem to be developing a consensus that vehicles should be taking on some of a wearable's functionality. As evidenced by Volvo's newly announced tie-up with the Microsoft Band 2 fitness tracking wearable, car manufacturers are starting to explore how wearable devices will help drivers. The On Call app brings voice commands, spoken into the Band 2, into the mix. It'll allow you to pass an address from your smartphone's agenda right to your Volvo's nav system, or to preheat your car. Eventually, Volvo would like your car to learn things about your routines, and communicate back to you – or even, improvise to help you wake up earlier to avoid that traffic that might make you late. Do you need to buy a device, like the $249 Band 2, and always wear it to have these sorts of interactions with your car? Despite the emphasis on wearables, CES 2016 has also given us a glimmer of a vehicle future that cuts out the wearable middleman entirely. Take Audi's new Fit Driver project. The goal is to reduce driver stress levels, prevent driver fatigue, and provide a relaxing interior environment by adjusting cabin elements like seat massage, climate control, and even the interior lighting. While it focuses on a wearable device to monitor heart rate and skin temperature, the Audi itself will use on-board sensors to examine driving style and breathing rate as well as external conditions – the weather, traffic, that sort of thing. Could the seats measure skin temperature? Could the seatbelt measure heart rate? Seems like Audi might not need the wearable at all – the car's already doing most of the work. Whether there's a device on a driver's wrist or not, manufacturers seem to be developing a consensus that vehicles should be taking on some of a wearable's functionality.