Why Did BMW Retire the S54B32 Engine?

Remember BMW’s S54B32 engine and it’s sound? Here is the commercial released by BMW two years ago that will remind us why this engine was loved by many automotive enthusiasts:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbNacresHow&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

BMW was unable to resist the lure of ever-increasing cylinder counts and therefore shifted into the V8 which is in the current M3. Unfortunately, this decision ended the production of S54B32 — the greatest straight six ever.

The V8 engine is a beauty in its own right, but the excellence of straight six engines are rare. Here’s an excerpt from Jalopnik’s article on what makes the S54B32 engine great:

What makes the S54B32 so wonderful is not the mountain of engineering awards. Not the incredible g’s its poor valves must resist at maximum revs. Not the horsepower-to-displacement ratio of a 1960’s Formula One car.

What makes the S54B32 so wonderful is the noise. It’s the only engine this side of supercar lunacy that has such a—for lack of a better word—voluminous sound. You’ll know it when you’re around one when the air around you suddenly fills with this high-grade metallic substance, this gray-blue vapor of noise that fills an S54B32’s surroundings with such fearful urgency. What makes this even sadder is that BMW was fully aware of what they had on their hands.

Source: Jalopnik