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Originally Posted by Onesie
@sedan_clan a few points to add to the conversation (and to sidebar from the ridiculous name calling and whatnot the other poster was doing):
1- you brought up stopping distance. That has nothing to do with brakes. That is all traction. Unless the brakes fade during that breaking, every car has enough brakes to lock the wheels. How far they take to stop depends on the traction the tires have to stop. Stopping distance is immaterial to the floating/fixed piston discussion.
2- when you bring up that few people track their cars, and if they do they upgrade the brakes, you’re somewhat making the point that BMW cheaped out on brakes. And they may have used the same logic you did.
I understand you’re trying to say BMW didn’t cheap out. A fixed calliper is more expensive than a floating single piston calliper. BMW decided to use a single piston floating calliper on a heavier car. If not for cost, what technical reason did they have?
I may have missed your perspective in other posts.
By “cheap out”, let’s understand BMW used what was necessary to have the car perform as they wanted it to, while making compromises to make the car viable (or else every part would be carbon fibre, for example, cost a fortune and not sell), and lucrative.
By “cheap out”, some are making the case that BMW is profiting more now than they did.
Which is industry standard.
An engineer that develops a hub with one less bolt (e.g. from 5 to 4), while saving pennies per wheel, saves the company millions as millions of cars are built. That’s how it works. I’m curious to understand how it isn’t “cheaper, but it is better”. Unless we’re splitting hairs here and debating the semantics of “cheapening out”. If we agree with this, I think we’re all on the same page. Doesn’t make the new brakes better though.
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As far as I know, Bmw does not manufacture or design brakes.
They merely choose which products to use from those offered by suppliers on the market (Brembo, in this case).
Brembo (not Bmw) produces both more expensive and higher performance solutions (multi-piston rear calipers with e-brake integrated) for exotic supercars, and simpler and cheaper solutions for street cars (floating single pot caliper with e-brake).
They could have chosen the more expensive solution and I'm pretty sure Brembo would have been more than happy to sell them, but it probably wouldn't have been worth it considering the intended use, that's all.