Aside from a certain favoritism going on towards BMW, I do love a set of tuning companies that really know what they are doing when it comes to this kind of cars.

Since it was the Germans that brought us fast business and luxury saloons it only seems fitting that they fulfill our modifying needs.

In the case of German specialist Hartge, they’ve shown their work on numerous occasions.

With the F10 BMW M5 they didn’t come up with anything remarkably new or innovative. Nobody saw any major changes in what they had planned and that’s just great.

When it comes to buying stuff like this you don’t want surprises, you really want something distinctive and special without looking like a clown version.

That’s why Hartge fitted a new front spoiler, a rear silencer, carbon fibre mirror casings, 21 inch multi-spoke alloys with Michelin or Continental tires.

Inside you can have a few similar tweaks such as custom aluminium pedal sets and branded floor mats made from velour.

There is one thing that’s considerably special about the Hartge F10 BMW M5. It has had a bit of tweaking under the bonnet.

It seems that under the business suit, this pretty lady is wearing some really sexy underwear as the 4.4 liter twin-turbo V8 engine develops more grunt.

Pinch it, and you’ll see a reaction worth 642 horsepower and 597 lb-ft of torque. That’s borderline porn excitement levels.

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It’s not all that. In this particular case, the BMW 1 Series M Coupe, a car which really solicits your knowledge of compliments, receives a makeover from such a word.

That’s because it’s a particular word a German tuning company chose to go by. Probably not the best decision they ever made.

The name is actually quite romantic in its appearance. Schwaben is a region in Germany we usually refer to as Swabia since we are hopeless at understanding the language completely.

Folia is somewhat simpler a name to understand since it doesn’t sound impossible to get right and is quite close to “foil”.

The name of the tuner is important since the BMW 1 Series M Coupe receives a striking lime green foil wrap, costing €2.150 or about $2.850.

A few other mods are available though, most notably the performance changes. You can get more power and sharper handling.

A power kit for the 1 Series M Coupe that lifts the output from 335 to 402 horsepower. That’s a well worth it upgrade which costs €1.299 or 1.700 USD.

If we’re honest, the Bilstein sports suspension (€2.499/US$3.300) is a matter of taste, since there are no complaints with the factory setup.

The titanium exhaust system Schwabenfolia charge €2.299 or $3.000 is not to everybody’s taste but having a louder sports car which drops some weight isn’t something you’d normally say no to.

Finally, you can get custom coating for the wheels if you’re willing to dish out another €800/US$1.100.

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The newer version of the 3 Series is a bit larger, much sharper looking and features new standards for refinement and performance.

Prior Design’s new package certainly keeps the refinement levels high. The design fits in perfectly and the craftsmanship is at some seriously good rankings.

What about the all important performance, how does it stack up once the Prior Design package now goes on? Is it still a sharp greyhound or has it started napping on the rug?

As the tuning company claims, the new kit was, erm, refined with aerodynamic principles in mind. That should help with stability and giving the driver confidence to push it.

Material used for this package is a blend of both thos factors. It’s high quality Dura-Flex plastic. The quality makes for refinement and the light weight helps performance.

By how much? It’s genuinely hard to tell but we have to appreciate that both changes will be marginal. It’s not like BMW uses coarse lead to build its bumpers.

Prior Design currently offer both bumpers, side skirts and a small rear wing. They can be purchased individually and summing it all up comes in at under 2000 euros.

The new alloy wheels displayed here are not part of the package (and they’re strikingly similar to some AMG units), they’re used to help the aesthetics of the F30 as much as possible.

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Until that is going to happen the pre-existing 1 Series coupes on the market are getting a bit more popular. Just enough to make owners worry.

As a result, the tuning companies are the ones that need to watch for the customer in need of a car which can stand out. Rieger Tuning has something on the books.

They can make the E82 1 Series Coupe look more impressive than the standard one by cheating. They aren’t exactly Dick Dastardly maneuvers but honesty is not the policy at use.

Essentially, we’re looking at a German tuning company which very efficiently makes your 1 Series look like the M Coupe model by virtue of the lower body kit.

Being at the lower end of the purchase doesn’t mean that you don’t have to look as though your cheap, right? I’m afraid that as much as people want to, that’s not the case.

Having a car that looks like the BMW 1 Series M Coupe doesn’t make it one. Thankfully, Rieger Tuning has some solid engineering to back the look up.

Stuff like 19 inch BBS CH-R alloys alongside Hankook S1 Evo tires and a KW coilover set-up for the suspension keeping it all in one place.

The package is made out of ABS plastic so at least weight is not really the problem.

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They’ve got a long list of bimmers under their tuning belt but the newer ones don’t seem to have made it into the business.

In hoping to catch up with the times, G-Power is previwing the package they are cooking up for the F12 BMW M6.

Not surprisingly, the engine remains the same as the standard car. Whereas the standard setup has 560 horsepower and 502 lb-ft of torque, things are different now.

By using Bi-Tronik III software and the same exhaust system they put into their F10 M5 tune-up. The result is the same as well since it now produes 640 horsepower and 574 lb-ft of torque.

The acceleration change should be there but G-Power haven’t included it in the changes. The 0 to 62 time might be somewhat similar given the great chance of wheel spin, but the rest of the runs should be significantly quicker.

We do expect that the infamous acceleration time will be somewhere below the 4 second mark whereas the top speed is said to be 193 mph.

G-Power’s coilover suspension kit and a set of 21 inch Silverstone RS alloy wheels with new tires are included in the package.

Customers who’d like to pound their M6 all the way are advised to opt for their ceramic brakes package for all that track work stress.

Overall, it’s nice new toy but I’m confronted by something unusual for G-Power cars. It feels like the F12 BMW M6 could do with more power.

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In today’s piece we’ll be looking at one of their widebody setups, one that’s custom tailored around the previous gen 5 Series.

As usual with such conversions, there have been replacements made to the front and rear bumpers, the front fenders are wider and there are rear wheel arch extensions.

So what makes this version of a wide body 5 Series stand out from the crowd? That’s a tricky one, if you’re standing in a crowd of 5 Series wide body kits.

Even so, the Prior Design widebody for the E60 toots its own horn with build quality. Apart from being assembled like a… well, BMW, it is made with top notch materials.

The core material used in this car is something described by the German tuner as high quality Dura-Flex FRP. We’re guessing it’s some sort of clever plastic.

Wouldn’t want to go too much into the details as speaking to a German who can pronounce something like that would probably be suicide by boredom.

Prior Design’s wide body kit also receives a vented bonnet, complete with power dome and M3 hints all around and a new boot lid spoiler.

It’s a discrete one, just in case somebody doesn’t spot the body kit setup you used.

Frankly, there is a bit of a chance of that happening since the paint finish chosen here is very business like and the alloy wheels though they are black, they seem restrained.

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Meanwhile, in the real world, people are appreciating the brand for things that are somewhat less fast, less sporty and less freshly introduced.

Regardless of the situation, the BMW X6 is quite the strong selling vehicle and it’s only natural to want to make a custom version for your own enjoyment.

So many zeros stuck on a car which is supposed to be sporty, sexy and still have a high driving position and an off-road look.

Within tuning this car, it’s fairly predictable to understand why AC Schnitzer tuned it the way they did. The German specialist didn’t bother too much with the off-road aspect.

It’s all about the sporty side of the equation. Once they were done with the 22 inch alloy wheel selection and aerodynamic body kit, things were mostly sorted on the look.

The suspension was also sharpened up but the boring side of the story is that the diesel engines are the only ones getting a performance tweak.

In AC Schnitzer form the BMW X6 xDrive30d develops 272 horsepower now whereas the xDrive35d is pushing out 310 horsepower.

All of these upgrades come in a nicely obvious packaged German form with some of the most decent or most overwhelming exterior packages.

Just in order to complete the whole deal, the E71 BMW X6 Falcon kit also comes with a considerable warranty which stretches up to two years or 100.000 km.

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Secretly, my preconceptions would tell me, “don’t worry about it, they won’t sell any”. Maybe Senner tuning started losing money, but it would teach the others a lesson.

It hasn’t happened, my old fashioned thinking was thumped by the German tuner’s effort and even though one of their customers sold it back to the car maker, it didn’t last.

Senner Tuning found a new customer for the turbocharged oil burning BMW X6 before anybody was interested in the way the they were making Audi S5 or Audi Q7.

Now, we’d love to take potshots at the way the main rivals at Audi don’t make interesting enough cars to begin with but the truth is not really there.

High powered performance cars that care very little about what you think, how much fuel they use and the way they they go over speed bumps are dying out.

Much like in purchasing new cars, fuel economy is getting in the way and diesels still have the upper hand, by far. Even when it comes to “cool cars” like the BMW X6.

Those bloody Germans, they think they know everything and what’s really annoying is that it seems they’re right. Or maybe we could blame the clients and economic conditions of our time.

Whatever we blab on about, tuned versions of diesel engines are bound to make their way into much more interesting cars (and ruin them).

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A-Works are probably the least responsible of the lot. They decided to tune up the BMW 1 Series M Coupe. We had one cheap-ish sports car on the market that was brilliant and they’re taking it away.

Granted, they’re giving it back in better shape if you’re willing to pay for their package but really, there is a time when cost cutting needs to be heard of.

If you’re that rich, or that oblivious, A-Works do make a good case for themselves when it comes to upgrading the car, particularly for performance addicts.

They’ve fitted a new air filter, a new downpipe, larger intercooler and then they remapped the ECU. All of these really ring out the 3.0 liter twin-turbo straight six cylinder.

As a final tweak, they can run the biproduct of all this extra speed through an Akrapovic Evolution Titan exhaust system which has a remote control valve and carbon fiber end pipes.

Summing everything up, the BMW 1 Series M Coupe now produces 450 horsepower and 405 lb-ft of torque. It’s a boost of nearly 120 horses but there is just one nagging thing to consider.

No mention has been made about the torque curve. We need to know things like this in order to find out what smoothness is available or what kind of lag we can expect.

Still, having more power than an F30 M3, maybe even as much as the next generation F80, in a car that’s this light does sound tempting.

As seen on TS

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The Z8 is one of the finest bits of nostalgia lane for most Bavarian built product enthusiasts and, if we’re honest, there’s not too much reason for that to happen.

As plenty of reviewers pointed out over time, the car is quite flawed. The complaints were mostly related to the handling and plenty of them can be overcome.

There’s a very good reason for doing so, the car is very beautiful and it still features some of the best looking styling cues ever used in a car.

Then you lift the bonnet and find the great racing derived engine that was lifted from under the bonnet of the E39 BMW M5. That engine gets a bit of work from G-Power.

It’s not a lot, it’s just two packages and one comes with 415 horsepower whereas the other comes with slightly more at 888 horses.

Yep, more than double the power. Obviously G-Power fitted some serious upgrades for the suspension, brakes, wheels and tires and did a bit of aerodynamics to keep up with that.

Could this car ever get meaner? If James Bond’s biggest villain held a convention for all the other ones, there would definitely be such a car in the parking lot.

G-Power usually overdo their power gains but for the Z8 the 888 horsepower figure seems about right. It’s still crazy but it does fit the risk levels of poor handling brilliantly.

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