Mine had the M Carbon bucket seats that look like they’d be painful but weren’t. To try all this out in the real world, or at least in Arizona, I got a light blue automatic and took off. The steering carries over from the previous M2 and feels set up just a little more for comfort, perhaps at the expense of liveliness. There are no carbon-ceramic brakes offered, but you might not need them unless you’re going to the track on this, which many owners probably will. The brakes are particularly interesting because they are electrically actuated, which might be-and feel-faster-acting. It may be an oversimplification to say the M2 is basically a shrunken-down M3/M4, but that’s where it got its (slightly detuned) inline six-cylinder engine, suspension links with large castor and kingpin angles and lowered roll center, and M Compound brakes with six-piston fixed-caliper 15-inch discs at the front and floating-caliper 14.6-inch discs at the rear. That power and torque go to the rear wheels only, through BMW’s standard electronically controlled Active M Differential, shared with the M4, which can lock up to 100% when an inside wheel is slipping. I had the automatic and found it a joy to paddle-shift up and down the gears on some of northern Arizona’s best twisty roads. Yes, that engine is mated to your choice of the standard six-speed manual or optional eight-speed M Steptronic automatic. ![]() It was more than up to the task of hauling around my M2’s 3867 pounds in automatic transmission trim (or 3814 pounds in manual). The new M2 packs 90 more ponies than the previous deuce. Those meaty engine performance curves make driving easier because there’s power and torque available seemingly anywhere on the tach. Peak power comes at 6250 rpm and peak torque from 2650 to 5870 revs. With fully variable valve timing and variable camshaft timing, it makes 453 hp and 406 lb-ft of torque, most of which is available across a wide swath of engine speeds. The heart of the M2 is its 3.0-liter twin-turbo straight-six. Just don’t let this car’s design peccadilloes deter you from actually driving it, because you will surely miss out on some great corners if you do. The back end returns to confusion, granted, but that balances out the front, with a few too many folds and creases. Aft of that, it’s pure athleticism, like Haecker said: The flared fenders and unique side skirts say “performance” in both German and English. So it’s a BMW front end, but the same thing we’ve been arguing about since Chris Bangle was in Jr. They are individual, and they are related to the BMW 2-Series.” “It says ‘athletic charisma.’ In the front we have the wide, frameless BMW kidney with the horizontal bars, rectangular air inlet, and LED headlights with their own contour. More specifically, “I think it’s a very clear and puristic design that makes you feel the driving experience even at a standstill,” said Dirk Haecker, head of development for BMW M GmbH. “…the M2 is most obviously differentiated from the BMW 2-Series Coupe by the M-specific design features necessary for cool air intake and routing and aerodynamic balance,” BMW said. Had designers and engineers simply flattened the whole thing out, maybe no one would be upset. Unfortunately, underneath the kidney beans, the design gets a little confused, with a folded-origami assemblage of inlets, creases, grilles, and bracing. Like its predecessor, the second-gen M2 you see here has subdued twin kidneys. ![]() It’s not as bad as the M4, which wears a pair of air-slurping snout nostrils that could scare a tapir. Sticker price starts at $63,195.īut first, people seem to love bashing BMW grille designs, so let’s have a look at this one. With straight-six power and torque, a stiffened body, and an active differential for this rear-drive-only coupe, your only problem will be getting someone to pry it from your hot, sweaty hands when your track time is over. ![]() You have to get past the confused front end to find that the rest of the second-generation 2023 BMW M2 is pretty much fantastic.
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