You'd think that the long-standing war of luxury marques had settled down by now. As with the idea that nobody makes a truly bad car anymore, all modern luxury cars are quiet, quick, and reliable. And so you'd think that, within this ubiquitous fact, the allegiances are pretty clear-cut, too: BMWs are for Ultimate Drivers, Mercs for comfort-seekers/gadget-philes, Audis for weirdoes who love four-wheel drive, Lexuses for seniors, Cadillacs for red state-ers, and so on. You know which one you want, and you can't go wrong anyway, so what's to argue about?
Except, the badge battles are hotter than ever, thanks to a slew of traditional also-rans who are now gunning for the BMW/Mercedes duopoly that has long been king of the hill. From Audi's gradual rise into marquee territory, to the resurgence of American Cadillac, to even Hyundai building luxury models that could well compete in content, if not in name, there's never been a better time to bet on the field. Audi, for the past several years, has been riding the popularity of the R8, positioning its mid-engined halo car—and the rest of its lineup, by extension—as pavement-pounding hell-raisers bent on uprooting the stuffy establishment, like automotive Sex Pistols. And it seems to be working too, with Audi posting record sales numbers across the board in 2011.
And the R8 was only the tip of the iceberg. Between it, the Mercedes SLS, the Lexus LFA, the Nissan GT-R, and now a new Acura NSX in the works, almost every builder of posh sedans has a fire-breathing, two-door flagship to herald the brand, which makes it a curious time for BMW to be saying, after years of will-they-won't-they, that they will not be pursuing an M1 revival. Not that it's an obvious business case: After all, the point of halo cars is not to make a profit, and it's plausible that the Ultimate Driving Machine might not need a loss leader to prop its image up. But with its competitors nudging closer than ever to its back bumper, is it the right call?
Of course, though the M1 is a classic, that's not because it was successful. Conceived to compete with the likes of Porsche on the international motorsport circuit, the M1 was designed in conjunction with Lamborghini, until the Italian firm's deep financial troubles forced BMW to take back control of the project after just seven prototypes were built. Then, as soon as it was launched in 1978, it was already ineligible for the Group 5 racing it was built for in the first place. The result was a beautifully designed car, immaculately engineered and built around a marvel of a 3.5-liter straight-six engine, with hardly anywhere to race. The story has a silver lining, however, as the BMW's then-recently formed Motorsport division and that glorious engine of theirs continued on in the form of the first M5, beginning a tradition of sport-tuned sedans and supercars in disguise that continues to dominate their category to this day.
And it's exactly that stellar lineup of M3s and M5s that makes BMW think it doesn't need a purpose-built, mid-engine supercar to compete with the likes of the R8. And they've also got the hybrid-electric i8, which has the looks to be Tom Cruise's exotic ride in Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, but in real life won't be bothering any Ferraris with its speed. So it seems for the time being that BMW will soldier on, banking on its industry-leading image as the driver's car of choice, its M3 and M5 sedans parked in most car journalists' one-car garages until the next Audi RS5 or AMG Mercedes can finally knock them off their well-earned perch. For the general public, though, image can matter as much as engineering, and all the superior driving dynamics in the world might lose against a superior ad campaign. And it's in that arena, in the demographics of upper-middle-management where sales figures are truly won or lost, that the Bavarians might wish they had a sleek, startling, low-riding Beamer of their own, capturing imaginations as it roars across your television.