The BMW M3 occupies a strange position in automotive culture. It is spoken about less as a car than as a lineage; a series of aspirations and grievances layered on top of one another over four decades. Each new generation is born burdened not just with performance targets, but with a set of expectations: of what the M3 once was, what it represented, and what it lost.

Luxury automobiles function as cultural signals as much as mechanical ones. In the Toyota Century and the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, we see how national values—from hierarchy to uncertainty to individuality—quietly shape what luxury looks and feels like. These cars don’t compete so much as they converse.

When your biggest volumes and profits come from comfy, tech-dense SUVs, those defaults start pulling everything—even your icon—toward refinement, insulation, and spec bloat.

What happened to the most profitable big-volume luxury carmaker on earth, and what part of this story is about strategy, what part is macroeconomics, and what has to change?

The headlines say EV sales are growing, but beneath the surface, consumer sentiment in the U.S. is cooling.