The camo will finally come off BMW’s M6 GT3 in Frankfurt

By Stephen Edelstein Published September 8, 2015

BMW is making a habit of turning some of its lowest-profile models into race cars. Despite its good looks and sporty pedigree, it’s surprisingly easy to forget about the BMW Z4, until you see one of the racing versions screaming around Lime Rock or Daytona.

It’s the purest form of race-based marketing, and a phenomenon BMW hopes to repeat with the M6 GT3. The M6 is an aging model, but when the GT3 racer debuts next month at the 2015 Frankfurt Auto Show, it’s likely to get a little more attention from car fans.

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BMW announced the M6 GT3 back in October, and a steady stream of leaks and teasers followed. The car’s camouflaged silhouette is already pretty familiar, but BMW promises to peel away that camouflage soon. The company says the endurance race at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps was the last major outing for the current Z4 GT3, and that the M6 will take over next season.

Like the Z4 GT3, the M6 GT3 will be heavily modified to withstand the abuse of racing and still put on a winning performance. It’s the latest entry in the FIA-sanctioned GT3 class of modified road cars that already includes everything from Lamborghini Hurucán to Bentley Continental GT racers.

The M6 GT3 will feature a 4.4-liter turbocharged V8 that BMW says is only slightly changed from the version used in the stock M6. In racing form, it produces up to 585 horsepower. That’s 15 hp more than the standard M6, but 7 hp less than models equipped with the optional Competition Package.

However, the GT3 racer is a much svelter 1,300 kilograms (2,866 pounds), a result of stripping away all of the luxuries and leaving only necessities like a carbon-fiber crash structure and FIA-approved safety cell for the driver.

All of that will come at a cost of 379,000 euros (about $413,000) in Europe. That may seem like a lot, but BMW claims the M6 GT3 will actually be one of the most economical cars in its class, with powertrain running costs roughly 30 percent lower compared to the outgoing Z4 GT3. U.S. pricing will be announced at a later date.

In addition to European GT3 races, the Z4 currently competes in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship and Pirelli World Challenge on this side of the Atlantic. Expect the M6 to appear here in those series as well.

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Stephen Edelstein

Contributing Editor

Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…

Cars

Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles

rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

Cars

Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs

Range Rover Sport P400e

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States this month, while it figures out how to respond to President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars.

"As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans," JLR said in a statement sent to various media.

Cars

Toyota shifts gears: 15 New EVs and a million cars by 2027

Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

After years of cautiously navigating the electric vehicle (EV) market, Toyota is finally ramping up its commitment to fully electric vehicles.
The Japanese automaker, which has long relied on hybrids, is now planning to develop about 15 fully electric models by 2027, up from five currently. These models will include vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands, with production expected to reach 1 million units annually by that year, according to a report from Nikkei.
This strategy marks a significant shift for Toyota, which has thus far remained conservative in its approach to electric cars. The company sold just 140,000 EVs globally in 2024—representing less than 2% of its total global sales. Despite this, Toyota is aiming for a much larger presence in the EV market, targeting approximately 35% of its global production to be electric by the end of the decade.
The Nikkei report suggests the company plans to diversify its production footprint beyond Japan and China and expanding into the U.S., Thailand, and Argentina. This would help mitigate the impact of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all car imports, as well as reduce delivery times. Toyota is also building a battery plant in North Carolina.
For now, Toyota has only two fully electric vehicles on the U.S. market: The bZ4X and the Lexus RZ models. The Japanese automaker is expected to introduce new models like the bZ5X and a potential electric version of the popular Tacoma pickup.
Separately, Toyota and Honda, along with South Korea’s Hyundai, all announced on April 4 that they would not be raising prices, at least over the next couple of months, following the imposition of U.S. tariffs. According to a separate Nikkei report, Toyota’s North American division has told its suppliers that it will absorb the extra costs of parts imported from Mexico and Canada. Another 25% for automotive parts imported to the U.S. is slated to come into effect on May 3.