BMW Prototype: E36 5-dørs Compact

2.312 visninger | Oprettet: 5. feb 2015

Det er kun lykkedes mig, at finde dette ene billede af den, men det er vel også fint nok, for den er jo ikke ligefrem skide flot - dermed ikke sagt, at den 3-dørs er det.

Remember the BMW Compact? Essentially the grandfather of the BMW 1-Series. When this first Compact was introduced in 1993, it very popular in its home market in Europe, hich prompted BMW to market the car to North America a year later. This despite the rear suspension uses a semi trailing arm from the previous model BMW 3 Series (E30). The inherent design of the trailing arm suspension was that it favoured oversteer. Consequently, the automotive press said that the car wandered and darted in a straight line, and was uncomposed in the corners. I do wonder though, had they offer a 5-door variant and with the E36’s “Z-axle” multilink suspension.

Back in the day, the BMW E36 Compact was the car you’d pick if you needed anything like what a 1 Series Coupe offers you today. It was small, cheap an easy to use around town. However, it was ugly.

Some people could get over the looks of the car and get to driving as soon as they saw it though.That's because that car handled like another legendary model in BMW’s history: the E30. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since the E36 Compact used the same rear suspension as the retired model before it.

With such a suspension design at the back of the car, the Compact was destined to oversteer in almost every corner, making it a really fun car to drive. In remembrance, rendering master Theophilus Chin, created a 5-door version of the Compact, just as an imagination exercise, as the car was only available as a 3-door variant. Would you have considered it if BMW decided to make it with 2 extra doors or is it still too ugly to even think of it?