BMW 118i M Sport: Reversal of fortunes

Singapore

IF ANYTHING proves that brand values and heritage matter little to consumers, the new BMW 1 Series hatchback might be it. For most of its history, BMW was a company that took pride in only building cars with the engine in front driving the rear wheels, a format to which it attributed its products' fine handling. The rest of the world calls this configuration rear-wheel drive (RWD), but so assured of its wisdom was BMW that it called it "standard drive".

Well, that particular standard must have changed, because the new 1 Series flips the script and is now front-wheel drive (FWD). It was once a scaled-down 3 Series under the skin (which made it expensive to build), but is now mechanically related to BMW's X1 and X2, and the entire Mini range.