is there any special reason bmw chose to go with an sohc instead of dohc? while cars with forced induction dont benefit as much as NA's from dohc's it just suprises me that bmw would go the route they did. i would guess that it has something to do with the tritec motor and costs as the new S has a dohc. i could guess all day but would rather hear why from someone with more insight

 

My thought process is working the other way. Why bother with DOHC other than not wanting to use rockers and wanting a greater angle between the valves.

 

They packed alot of content into a $20k car so with dohc being a good bit more expensive/more parts that could be a reason in itself.

Otherwise Chrysler had their dohc version of this engine from 95-99 but switched after the neon redesign. Similar engine but diff. architecture so it was possible.