All the M3 engines they can make may be spoken for (archive)

That's a nice theory, but it assumes BMW is capable of making enough of the 3.2 liter M engines to meet demand. At the moment, it appears that the engine is the limiting factor in coupe production, and they appear to have enough buyers to cover at least two years of 2 doors.

So, unless demand for the coupe vanishes (yeah, right), or they find a way to make lots more S54 engines, what motivation do they have for spending engineering time on variants of the coupe? If engine plant capacity is fixed, every 4 door car made would simply reduce coupe production, and they can already sell as many coupes as they can make.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see 4 door M3's, and wagons. But I don't see any FISCAL motivation for BMW to do it any time soon. I suspect BMW will never _need_ to make a 4 door and a wagon, but they might _choose_ to do so a couple years from now simply for the fun of it, and to make sure they stay on equal prestige footing with various competitors.

But I don't see that BMW is walking away from sales here unless you find some way to double the production capacity of the engine.

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