I think people get confused by the acronyms and advertising bs.
I've tried to get my head around this whole adaptive/dynamic/variable BMW babble-speak.
Lets take another direction on this discussion…
Bear with me here …
Picture the suspension components (with the exception of the damper/shock) completely constructed out of HAMMERS (ya hammers). How the hell does any computer (using sensors, blinking diodes or fancy LED schematics) turn the hammers into anything other than hammers? Marketing babble-speak aside the only thing that can change is the shock/damper’s dampening… and to do that you need adjustable dampers.
Now, pictures the damper as spanner and the adjustable damper as an adjustable spanner.
Throw in some teutonic, highfalutin, dynamic, variable computer programming and now you can get
one suspension component to change… yep a variable damper can be adjusted just like an adjustable spanner.
So if you bought a car with spanners and hammers for suspension components how does anything happen with the suspension when you hit a button on the console?
Someone might have to take me out to the tool shed on this one.
p.s.
I guess if you disagree with my rant you can point out what parts (on the attached image) that the computer magically changes if your car does not have dynamic dampers…