I’m a fan of BMW but I’m also a car enthusiast. There’s no fanboy-ism here. I like cool cars, interesting from any brand, from any country, so long as they’re cool and interesting. And often times that means enjoying cars from rival brands, which can get interesting when I so often interact with diehard BMW fans. However, I know there are many of you that also like cars from rivals brands, sometimes enough to be big fans of rival brands, even if you don’t want to admit it. So, since this is a safe space, which rival BMW brand do you also love?
I’ll go first, so any trolls can attack me and not you. I’ll be the chum to the shark-infested ocean. The obvious answer is Porsche because everyone outside of diehard Corvette fans loves Porsche. However, there’s an even bigger rival BMW brand that I genuinely love—Mercedes-Benz.
Mercedes has been making incredible cars for even longer than BMW and have made some of my favorite cars of all time. In fact, of all the cars I’ve ever driven, my absolute favorite has a three-pointed star—the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG. Its 6.2-liter free-breathing V8 is by far and away the greatest engine I’ve ever used and I’m including Ferrari and McLaren V8s, the Audi R8 V10, and every BMW engine. AMG’s hand-built V8 is an absolute masterpiece and it cemented my love for the brand.
However, I also love so much of Mercedes’ history, including cars like the 300SL Gullwing, Stirling Moss’ 300 SLR, the big Grosser, the Porsche-tuned 500E, and countless others. I think Bruno Sacco-designed Mercedes’ sedans are among the best looking four-door cars ever made and I’m dying to own an R129 SL-Class. I love G-Class SUVs, S-Class sedans, and basically every non-SUV AMG.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t love BMW as well. Both brands make incredible cars and have astonishing histories. I also love their rivalry, because both cars have pushed each other to make better and better cars over the years. Without Mercedes, the E30 M3 would have never existed because it was only made to compete with Mercedes’ brilliant 190E 2.3 Cosworth DTM car. So loving rival brands isn’t a betrayal to one or the other, it’s loving the spirit of competition and being objective about the great cars that they make. So which rival BMW brand do you love?