Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry Kennedy
I actually talked to someone quite high up in BMWNA when the "classified" (sorta) renderings were shown (no cameras allowed) up in Woodcliff Lake years ago. They explained that the overall industry thinking at the time was that people wanted a lot less glass and to feel more safely enclosed after 9/11 but that due to model lifecycles we weren't going to see those changes for some time. I think it was 3-4 years after I was shown those renderings before the actual models that started really shrinking the greenhouse made it here. And I'd lost interest after the E9x was a disappointment.
And ot course this is an excuse to sell yet more tech like full cameras as "mandatory options" where it is so tied into the rest of the car that it becomes nearly impossible for anyone except the dealer to troubleshoot if the problem is complex. Even on the E46, if you sit on the combined i-bus/k-bus there is all sorts of weird stuff going on. The passenger side mirror checks for the existense of lumbar support and other hard-to-justify stuff like that.
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The 9/11 logic seems really weird.
Last I heard, it primarily comes down to European pedestrian safety requirements that forced manufacturers to create lots of space between the engine and the hood. And that looks HORRIBLE if you don't raise the belt line of the car.