On the coat tails of today ‘s big announcement about M Performance Automobiles ‘s this video interview Dr. Friedrich Nitschke, President of BMW M GmbH reviews the success of 2011 and gives a glimpse into 2012. Having had some great conversations with Dr. Nitschke in the past, he like his predecessor Dr. Kay Segler, has a great passion for BMW and M cars. In our discussions last year he emphatically believed that the 400 plus engineers working at M have something to offer the automotive enthusiast other brands just can ‘t match.

This new line of cars provides those engineers the ability to serve more customers with products that offer great performance but that are not the full on focussed M offerings (or as expensive). Some may feel this is watering down of the brand M but in reality this is M returning to its roots of offering more performance above the base car while still building the more focussed products of today such as the M3, and M5 for the most demanding customers.

The European market should see two models introduced at Geneva- the X6 M550d and the M135i.We reached to to Matthew Russell, BMWNA M Brand Manager, to see how this announcement impacts the US. He informed us that this announcement will not impact the US market within the near future.