A Quick History of BMW and the Turbocharged Engine
BMW and the Turbocharger have a long and celebrated history. Spanning five decades, forced induction has been a successful venture for BMW that has allowed them to reach performance goals at the factory and given aftermarket tuners significant headroom to beef up the boosted engines from Bavaria. While BMW wasn’t the first to market with a mass-produced turbocharged engine, they were one of the first few and introduced a legendary car that still commands a premium today back in 1973. Now, thanks to that gamble and its payoff, we have some of the best engines available that still draw on the technology from fifty years ago to give us the satisfying power, noise, and efficiency we crave as BMW enthusiasts. Whether you’re a die-hard naturally-aspirated fan or a forced-induction fiend, there is much to appreciate about what BMW has done with the tech, especially now that they have picked small-displacement, turbocharged, high-efficiency engines to dominate their lineup. Today, we are going to walk through a brief history of BMW and the turbo to show you why their modern engines are so damn successful on the street or the track.
Back in the ‘60s, Oldsmobile brought us the JetFire V8 as an optional engine package for the F-85 Cutlass that found its way to market as the first turbocharged engine mass-produced for everyday consumers in 1962. Partnered with Garrett, they showed the world that there was, in fact, a replacement for displacement. Unfortunately, after only a year of production and a mere 4,000 units sold, the JetFire engine option was canned due to reliability and impracticality issues. Fortunately, though, it made enough of an impression on the consumer and manufacturing fronts to intrigue others to follow suit. |
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Eleven years later, in 1973, BMW unveiled the 2002 Turbo. A risky venture considering only ten years separated the death of the JetFire engine. Turbocharger technology had only slightly improved since then, but thankfully, BMW made the choice to produce the car. Unfortunately, once again, the model only lasted a year. It was plagued by similar problems as the Oldsmobile engine. Fuel consumption, reliability, and extreme turbo lag caused BMW to drop the engine option and discontinue the 2002 Turbo, sadly doing away with the quirky liveries and widened arches that differentiate the Turbo variant from its naturally-aspirated brethren.
Even after that minor setback, it didn’t stop BMW from pursuing turbo technology. What the 2002 Turbo, and other turbocharged cars like the 911 Turbo, showed was that the potential existed. Enthusiasm for boosted cars grew and new manufacturers like SAAB, Mercedes Benz, Buick, Maserati, Peugeot, and Porsche again started to mess around with improving the viability of the Turbocharged engine. BMW observed, researched, and patiently waited for more groundwork to be laid before they would explore the option again.
While it is somewhat sad that we did not see an immediate follow-up to the 2002 Turbo, or even a late follow-up, the patience paid off for BMW and consumers. The early turbo cars, as neat and interesting as they were, still suffered several inherent flaws that made them more conversation pieces than real performance machines destined for greatness. Like any budding technology, the first generations are often geared towards progressive consumers interested in the tech aspects and intrigued by the glimpse into the future more than they are the product itself. They were a novelty, like computers, mobile phones, home video recorders, and other bits of future-tech that would eventually ingrain themselves as staples of modern society.
So too did the turbocharged engine. Thanks to the TurboDiesel engines of the late ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, the concept was allowed an arena to grow and improve in reliability, power, and viability as a commercially available alternative to large displacement. The benefits of forcing pressurized and cooled air into the combustion chamber for greater horsepower and torque without sacrificing fuel economy when compared to large engines of equal power became quite real and quantifiable over those three decades, and BMW took note.
With their second turbocharged gasoline engine debut in 1980 in the M102, quickly followed by the M106, they introduced the inline-six turbo with the E23 745i that offered a bump in performance for the large luxury sedan with both engines making around 250hp at the crank. From a six-cylinder engine at the time, those figures were enough to raise eyebrows, but they didn’t catch on as a wave of the future, which led to BMW dropping the engine again in 1986. Although it only lasted six years and received only a minor update in its second iteration that lasted four of those years, it was enough to generate interest in the next generation of BMW designers, engineers, and consumers. |
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That interest came back to the market with the release of the N54 in the E9X 335i/is when BMW finally made a breakthrough. Despite some bugs in the design, like the constant need for walnut shell blasting from the newly introduced direct-injection fuel system and the finicky waste gate issues, among others, the N54 has been a highly celebrated and extremely successful platform. Successful enough that it was generally more easily capable of reaching high horsepower numbers than the naturally aspirated V8 found in the top-of-the-line M3 from the same generation.
Funny enough, BMW actually had an intense decision-making process around which engine would go into the E46 M3 successor. While they wanted to use another straight-six after the S5x generations, they felt they were at the peak of what the platform could do without adding either turbochargers or more cylinders. The back-and-forth at the time was whether it would be truer to form for them to stay with a straight-six and add turbos, despite the M3’s lineage being exclusively NA, or to drop in a V8 similar to what was found in their 7-series and 5-series lineup. Ultimately, the S65 V8 was chosen for the M3 while the 335i/is (among others) received the N54 straight-six twin-turbo engine. As they would come to witness, however, the aftermarket support for the N54 greatly outweighed that of the S65 and persists to this day as what some call the ‘German 2JZ.’
With that experience under their belts, the new generation of engines found in M-cars and standard production models alike shifted to turbocharged versions rather than naturally aspirated ones. Although it isn’t as loved as the N54, the new N55 twin-scroll, single-turbo, straight-six found its way into several of BMW’s sporty non-M cars, while the S55 was developed for the new F80 M3 and F82 M4, marking the first turbocharged M-cars ever. The results are opinions aside, astounding. With tons of performance potential from basic bolt-ons and impressive figures right out of the gate in stock trim, the turbocharger has finally paid off for BMW.
Now, nearly all modern BMW models are equipped with a highly efficient, potent, and technology-packed turbocharged engine that offers the same performance capabilities as their naturally aspirated predecessors with several benefits over the heavy, inefficient, and simple old engines. Some, of course, pine for the days when BMWs were as basic as tractors under the hood. The fire-and-forget nature of those engines made them stout workhorses and dead-reliable for racing due to their low-cost to performance ratio. However, the weight, power, fuel-efficiency, and performance potential associated with the turbo engines make them the obvious choice for BMW enthusiasts moving forward, including your favorite racing team, Turner Motorsport, with their M4 GTD car.
Of course, we aren’t saying you should ditch your trusty NA engine for a new turbocharged one. What we are excited about, though, is the further development of these cars as BMW continues down the road of forced-induction into the future. With a long history of turbocharged technology, recent years have seen exponential growth not unlike the power curve of a boosted engine thanks to the continuous improvement of the turbocharged platforms. With any luck, we will see these engines become even more refined. For now, we can all enjoy what they offer and modify them to our heart’s content. If you are still a non-believer, go check out some of our articles on the N55 and N20 where we explain how you can make over 100HP with just some simple upgrades, which handily proves the incredible potential from the new-wave of BMW performance. Everything you need to get the most out of your BMW can be found right here at Turner Motorsport and all the information you need to arm yourself with the knowledge to do it with confidence is inside Turner Motorsport Weekly. |
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