I was thinking about this earlier today and am going to go into detail on the "ad-war" that was going on (from 2006 to the one now). However, the idea of the marketing scheme got me thinking about suggestions for BMW (see last part of OP). VW has Audi's R8, Porsche (soon to be VW) has a 911 turbo/Carrera, Daimler has the SLR, and Ford has the GT. The point that I'm trying to make is: with looking at each company's top production car, it seems BMW is behind on the curve on this one. Can someone discuss this (whether or not this is something that I should look into?) I honestly feel that I'm on to something, but I might be missing something altogether.

Thanks for all the input guys!