Car Magazine Interviews New BMW M Boss Markus Flasch

The future of the M brand is in good hands. That’s the feeling we get after reading Car Magazine’s interview with Markus Flasch, head of BMW’s M Division. Flasch talks a lot about M products in a modern global economy but thankfully he’s clearly focused on the fundamentals of the M brand.

‘Look, I am more of a coupe and sports car driver, I never really drove SUVs much before,’ he admits. ‘But the M approach to SUVs is that we are trying to transport the feeling you get in an M3 or M4 to the first floor. It was the goal when we developed the new X3 and X4 M. We didn’t want to do the M version of an X3, we wanted to do an M3 in an SUV appearance. The reason for that is quite logical. Not everyone can drive an M3. If you live in an area with bad roads or if you are a mountain biker or snowboarder or if you need the room and have two or more kids – it would work in an M3, but it’s much easier in an SUV body.’

Perhaps more important to many of us is his obvious love for the M2 and M4 CS:

But we will also build more cars with the pure spirit of M, typically the smaller cars that we offer like the M2. You’ve seen our Competition models, our GTS version of the M4, the CS of the M3 and M4; these are what we call Sondermodelle [special editions]. We will do more of these – and we will think about extending it beyond just the coupes, too.’

Read the full interview here.