These Engines Should Vanish By 2026 But BMW M Has Other Plans

Ever-tightening emissions regulations have claimed the lives of multiple great performance engines over the years, including the E92 M3’s S65 V8. But BMW M’s boss says his company’s current power stations won’t be added to that that list, at least not for a while.

M CEO Frank van Meel was discussing the upcoming Euro 7 emissions standards and how they affected M’s engines when he assured Autocar’s reporter that the brand’s current turbocharged inline-six and V8 engines are safe. That means no power reductions and definitely no downsizing.

Related: This BMW M3 May Be The Heaviest Yet But Also The Quickest Ever

“I couldn’t imagine putting a four-cylinder in an M5,” van Meel told the magazine.

Euro 7 standards come into force in November 2026, having been pushed back from this year, and although the incoming regulations are less severe than initially proposed, they do pose a challenge for automakers. Because although the permitted level of exhaust tailpipe nasties is unchanged from Euro 6, cars must meet the requirements over a wider range of situations, an update designed to better reflect real-world use.

They also need to meet that level for 10 years and 124,000 miles (200,000 km), doubling the previous demand, and the upshot is that engineers now focus even more on maintaining Lambda 1, which is where the fuel:air ratio is most efficient.

“Normally, if you are in high-performance situations, you cool using the fuel. With Euro 7, that’s impossible, so you need to find different ways of avoiding temperature buildup,” Van Meel told Autocar at this month’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.

“Of course you can [reduce] performance to avoid this temperature increase, but you don’t want to – that’s where we started.”

Cars sold in the US are not required to meet European emissions regulations because America sets its own crash and emissions rules. But the European market is so big that automakers – especially European ones like BMW M – required to build cars a certain way to satisfy EU bureaucrats might not bother going to the expense of engineering something different just for the US.

It’s why the Golf GTI and R are no longer available with manual transmissions, though ironically that call was made before Euro 7 standards were watered down. That’s because VW was preparing for the worst-case scenario and decided not to bother un-making that call when it didn’t materialize.