[The Cleaner]

Some if not most of the changes are due to government regulations. The easiest example to see is the high hood lines for pedestrian safety. These new requirements have dramatically changed how cars look. As these requirements increase the choices for new car design and function are further limited. I think in the case of BMW the requirements for better fuel economy and changing design requirements have shown how depended the company was on the systems they previously used to achieve the results they once had.

The current generation of BMW's are not what we have been buying for decades, they are the first generation of what the future holds. The other car companies are not catching up, BMW has gone down and that's a big difference IMO. If you look at the current 3 it's not very good but the 2 is considerably better so this leave me with hope that the F30/32 are a hiccup in the BMW tradition of fine driving machines, the next 3 will likely regain what is missing.