Ford have been 3 wire "smart" coils (IGBT in coil) for a while that's for certain, I know for a fact the newest stuff is smart coils. Cant be sure about the french stuff but the 2005 ish pencil coils I have from Renault are simple dumb coils. They may have gone to smart coils now as well though.
Pretty sure Jag is smart coils as are VW/audi and FIAT.
Oddly BMW are sticking firm with the IGBT in ECU, it might be something to do with their use of a misfire detection by changes in ground plane voltage that result from the coils firing. They watch for the small spike and if it does not hit a certain voltage threshold then they log it as a possible misfire.
All of their coils are 3 wire but it is a red herring, the 3rd pin is actually the cable shroud/overbraid, same as their VR sensors, they are all 3 wire as one pin is the shielding, that one catches a lot of tuners out.
In my application the exhaust is just way too close to use pencil coils so I am using M50 coils in a "coil near plug" setup, for the more stock stuff it would only really be a step backwards as it would mean taking perfectly good reliable coils off and making mountings for the other coils and probably not then being able to get the engine covers back on as the stock design is actually sort of flat and boxy.
I guess one other issue is a lot of the easily available smart coils here are from front wheel drive family cars that are basically white goods, the coils are designed to be as small and light as possible while still doing the minimum job, the stock BMW coils however are actually pretty stout units that can throw a fairly decent spark, despite internet "fact" coil failures are actually pretty rare in the real world and normally due to bad maintenance (i.e. bad plugs or damage connectors). I have seen a car running fine with the plugs so worn that the gaps were ~1.2mm, a whole half mm over spec, wasn't even reporting misfire just had a slight audible lope to the idle when hot.
On a starting from scratch build I would go to smart coils directly if the ECU did not have ignition drivers in it already like the Frankenso or if the engine did not already have a half decent coil setup but for these it just feels like reinventing the wheel.
Personally the real goal is charging the coils off a 48v system and throwing sparks across some massive gaps which also comes along with other goodies a 48v supply allows but that's a whole different bag of modifications/crazy stuff.
I think the best bet for mating up with a stock BMW loom without loom mods is an IGBT box that I can build the IGBTs into and mount external to the ECU, really something like that Bosch Igniter box would be ideal but yet to find anything in 6 cylinder and buying 2 seems wasteful.
Really an OEM 6 cylinder unit would be perfect, we just don't have that much in the UK that is not a 4 cylinder shopping cart to rob it from.
Edit - Just did a bit more checking into the Bosch 4 cylinder ones, seems the audis with them in are fairly uncommon and a pair of new ones would be $170 here,
for some IGBTs in a box... just no.
