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Munich, Germany/August 20, 2003/--BMW technical head Prof Raymond Freymann held up three little metal cubes to the audience at the BMW Innovation Day in Munich recently. And with a little dramatic pause, dropped them one by one.

The first hit the floor with a loud thud. That's heavy. The second fell with a dull thud, lighter. The third sounded somewhat like a pin drop and bounced a couple of times. It was the lightest of the three.

The cubes were of the same size but Freymann made his point: they differed in weight.

The first cube was made of steel alloy, the second of aluminium alloy, and the third a new alloy that BMW proudly presented to the world - magnesium. It weighs only one third that of steel.

Weight for weight, this magnesium alloy is as strong as steel. And for carmakers, this alloy translates to faster and better handling cars, simply because the first fundamental equation for fast cars is: For speed, add lightness to engines.

But wait a minute. Magnesium? Every geek who has been in a school science lab would know that magnesium is a highly unstable material. In its pure form, magnesium corrodes easily, especially when wet and comes into contact with other metals such as iron. It also tends to crack under load at high temperatures.

However, the experts at BMW have come up with a magnesium alloy that has all the properties of steel. They then went one step further by creating the world's first composite magnesium/aluminium crankcase. It brought the weight down by one whole quarter.

"We are testing the composite crankcase for straight-six power units and are confident enough for this milestone in lightweight technology to enter regular production in BMW cars in the next two years," said Prof Freymann at the BMW Landshut Plant, a technical and development den about 30- minute's drive from Munich.

Some 30 journalists from all over the world gathered at the plant that July 15 to see what other innovations BMW had to offer. It was a one-day outing in which we were taken on a whirlwind tour of the Landshut plant to see their creations.

Other than the magnesium alloy, we were also shown what wonders they have done with carbon-fibre-reinforced plastics (CFP). Briefly, BMW has made CFP into car roofs, specifically and for the moment, the roof of the M3 CSL, shaving kilos in the overall weight.

This usage of space age CFP is nothing new, but BMW has spent a considerable bit of euros to build a factory that can mass produce the CFP roofs.

The production of CFP parts in the market is just limited to hand- made parts such as bonnets where the carbon-fibres sheets are manually glued together layer by layer.

The mass production of these CFP roofs translates to a 10 per cent reduction of the overall weight of the CSL, which improves the car's performance and agility, while reducing fuel consumption at the same time.

Another innovation is the Active Cruise Control Stop and Go. They fitted this to a Seven Series and what it does is that it provides comfort functions, supporting the driver and relieving him of the usual chores especially during traffic jams.

This means that in a traffic snarl, your car would follow the car in front, slowing down when it slows down, and stopping when your car's sensors sense the car in front stops. And moves again when the car in front moves. Now folks, that's what we need here on these jam- prone KL roads.

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