source: http://bimmer.roadfly.com/bmw/forums...7931647-1.html

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Posted by Rowley for DLS:
You heard it from me first in the M Lounge…

BMW quits sports cars
Lack of relevance to automakers’s product range cited

AutoWeek | Published 08/07/06, 3:11 pm et

BMW will pull out of U.S. sports car racing after an almost unbroken run of participation dating back to 1995.

BMW North America says it will end its 12-year relationship with Tom Milner’s Prototype Technology Group team at the close of the American Le Mans Series season. It is the end of a successful partnership that has yielded 54 wins from 114 race starts from 1995 to 2001 and from 2003 to 2006 in almost every U.S. sports car series.

A BMW North America spokesman says the company canned PTG’s long-running program because it no longer has any relevance to BMW’s product range. PTG races an E46-shape BMW M3, a car that is disappearing from dealerships. A new M3 likely won’t appear in the United States until 2008, and BMW does not want to race a car it does not sell.

BMW has not ruled out returning to sports cars in 2008, and Milner says PTG will continue next season, perhaps running its GT-2 class M3s in the ALMS on a privateer basis.


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btw: i blame bangle for this... say good bye to the sports car feeling you love and made you chose bmw over mercedes.. bmw will drive like mercedes going forward because of this... no wonder they dropped "the ultimate driving machine" to become of "company of retarded ideas"