Jeremiah 29:11

Yep, and we will be blowing past these car every chance we get.


The end of the line for muscle cars?

Danielle Boudreau, today at 11:26 AM EST



So what is the future of BMW’s revamped 2008 M3, all 414 horsepower of it? Ponder on that as you take in the car at the Canadian International Auto Show this week.

Gearheads, those with gasoline running through their veins, will be all over this car – which by the way goes on sale March 8 for $71,300 and $69,900, coupe and sedan respectively. And they should be.

This M3 is fierce, powered by the first eight-cylinder engine in an M3 ever. The original four-cylinder M3 of the 1980s looks pretty tame by comparison.
But this year’s Toronto show is very much dominated not by muscle cars like the M3 – and there are others such as the made-in-Canada Dodge Challenger – but a very broad array of less racy but no less interesting so-called “clean” or at least very fuel efficient vehicles.

Hybrids, diesels, more lightweight materials (not for performance but to improve fuel economy), cylinder deactivation systems, increasingly efficient engines... The car business is becoming more about how to go farther on a litre of gas – or diesel, or ethanol or hydrogen – than 0-100 km/hour times. The evidence of that is all over the convention centre and the Rogers Centre.

So have a look at that new M3, and it is an incredible car in a line dating back some two decades since the first M cars made their North American debut. BMW has, in fact, sold 180,000 M3s worldwide. Twenty years from now will there be another all-new M3? I wouldn’t bet on it.