|
Originally Posted by Top Gear
Finally, with the roads now shiny like glass, I step into the 1 M Coupe, the M2’s immediate predecessor, and arguably the biggest threat of all. BMW’s British wing pushed for this car, pushed for it to have a manual gearbox, and could have sold way more than the 450 units that turned up. No wonder this car is now worth more than it cost new five years ago, and a bona fide modern Munich legend. Here’s what I wrote about it back in issue 218 of Top Gear, in June 2011. Hope you don’t mind me quoting myself.
‘Now here’s a car to focus the mind in the old-fashioned way. Rear-wheel drive, twin-turbos, 335bhp, fat arches and a face only a mother could love. Though hardly lacking in technology, the word is that this is a proper old-school M car, perhaps even the true successor to the legendary ’80s E30 M3.
‘Stocky car, light weight (well, relatively light, by modern standards anyway – 1497kg), powerful engine, terrific rear-drive chassis, second-gear hairpin with perfect forward visibility… why can’t all cars be like this? Aim, point, fire. Balancing this thing on the steering and throttle is pretty much the crack cocaine of the car world.’
If anything, the 1 series M Coupe feels even more addictive in 2016, if amusingly traction-limited on slippery roads. But the really good news is that the M2 builds on the template, rather than flubbing it or smothering all the interactivity with layers of digital information. Even the DCT semi-auto edges the chunky six-speed manual for me now, so convincingly does it hook up and channel all those torques.
We’ll drive it in the UK soon, and I hope that its uncompromising suspension set-up doesn’t simply bounce it from one apex to another on our brilliant but broken B-roads. Right now, though, the M2 is almost exactly what you’d hope 40 years of blood, sweat, tears and technology would result in. BMW has just rebooted the ultimate driving machine.
|