Forget the 740bhp 2.7-tonne BMW XM crossover, the new BMW M2 is the kind of M car I can get behind. For me, if one sat down and dreamed up what one’s ideal BMW M car should be [funnily enough more on that in a feature another time], one would come up with something like this. Mostly.
It’s relatively small, it’s rear-driven, it has a straight-six engine with all of the usual slippy differential stuff going on and with the 50:50 weight distribution that BMW loves so much I suspect the M2 will be an absolute riot. Certainly, m’colleague Matt Saunders thought the signs were pretty good when he drove a prototype on circuit a while back.
However, back to that ‘mostly’. In olden times BMWs were rear-driven through and through, so a BMW 1 Series hatchback and coupe were small and rear-driven, and so a 1 Series M Coupe could easily be both of those things too.
But because BMW’s smaller platforms are now front-led, that means that M has adapted BMW’s bigger ‘Cluster Architecture’ to create the latest M2. And that means that while, yes, it’s smaller than an BMW M3 or a BMW M4 – and a bit lighter, too – those differentials are not as great as they once would have been.
A BMW 1 Series M Coupe tipped the scales at under 1500kg. The most recent BMW M2 had lifted this to 1575kg and this latest version tips the scales at 1700kg. Inevitable increases, perhaps, but sad ones nonetheless.