Originally Posted by Pete_vB
Pros and cons...
Why you should buy the M3: It’s the last of its breed. The trend towards bigger, heavier, more powerful, more cylinders M cars has ended, and is about to be reversed. This version of the M3 will be the high water mark, perhaps forever. The cars will continue to get faster, but they will start getting lighter, smaller and more efficient. Like the last of the air-cooled 911s or the last cars before emissions controls, this M3 will always hold a special place, and in the future it will be lamented (like the E30) that “you can’t built them like that anymore”.
You’ll also get more comfort, equipment spec, poise, noise and throttle response over the 1M. Everything on the M3 is bespoke and designed to work together as a package (the PS2 tires were designed for the car, etc). M3 = A great GT, James Bond in a dinner jacket.
Why you shouldn’t buy the 1M: It’s the first of the new breed of turbo, lighter weight and smaller M cars. As such it’s going to be surpassed in almost every way by the next one, which will be lighter and more powerful. The E92 will always be “the last of the V8s”, while the 1M can expect to be exceeded in every way by its successors, be they 1, 2 or 3 series.
Why you should buy a 1M: it’s the better handling car now. OK, I’m making a leap here, because we don’t know. But the 1M has 10% less weight, 10” less length overall = lower polar moment, wider track, lower height, same brakes, tires, diff, etc. The only way it doesn’t handle better is if they don’t want it to handle better. More important, it sounds like the tuning philosophy might be harder-edged, a return to the M3 of old.
Simple = good. A few people mention the1Ms turbos as a potential maintenance headache, but 10 years from now when the 200+ little electric motors in the M3 are starting to go wrong and the electronics and DCT is on the blink, having less equipment will be blessing. A manual transmission, good old-fashioned dampers, etc: save money, weight, less to go wrong, more “authentic and involving” driving experience.
Bonuses are that the more tuning friendly and hence many will be faster than an M3, not slower. It also gets 50% better gas mileage. And it’s a limited production car that will be “special” because it’s rare and the first of its kind, meaning is should hold value fairly well vs a dime a dozen M3. 1M = Jason Bourne, no dinner jacket but he can still kick James Bond’s ass.
Turbo vs N/A character is of course an issue, and unspoken are the image issues with driving either an M3 or a 1M. Do you want to wear the dinner jacket?
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