COMPACT FLASCH

WE SIT DOWN WITH THE PRESIDENT OF BMW'S M DIVISION AND TALK POWER, PLANS AND PURITY. AND SUBMARINES

- Andy Enright

MARKUS FLASCH ought to look happier. The boss of BMW M has just given a presentation highlighting how, within the space of five years, BMWs with M badges have seen sales rise by 207 percent. He’s just outlined a nine-model Sa product offensive through to 2021, and we're in the pit lane at a sunny Kyalami race track in South Africa with almost every car to ever wear an M badge available to us. And yet the brow is furrowed and he’s prickly, almost combative.

It’s a long way removed from the last time | spoke to him, almost a year ago when the 38-year-old ex-Magna Steyr prodigy and M8 product guru was newly installed in the job. Back then, he was affable and great for a quote. Maybe too great, as some of his more ebullient lines, such as calling the forthcoming M8 a “911 Turbo killer” seem to have been toned back for a more measured approach.

After claiming that nearly 50 percent of all BMWs now wear an M badge or are an Mtrim line, he denies that M is losing its specialness as a result and morphing into a default shorthand for BMW. “M has never been a competing brand to BMW," he says, shrugging. “M is the exaggeration of what BMW stands for, in terms of driving pleasure. M supplements BMW and it’s going to remain this way.”

Sales success can breed a new suite of problems though. Does driving BMW customers towards the faster and higher-emitting cars in the range merely undo a lot of the research and development investment the company is making in electric mobility? He does little to hide a flicker of annoyance. “The increase of market share of M models does not compromise the role you do. Our models are very efficient, and secondly, we are well experienced in balancing our portfolio,” he says.