Flat out in the new BMW M2

Was there an identifiable moment when it happened? I’m not sure. It was a gradual thing. Maybe the end of the V8 M3 was the inflection point, but look deeper and it has been a longer process than that. BMW M has become a different company from the one that is still lodged in our collective conscious. For the past three or four years it hasn’t sold a single car that is quite what we really think an M car should be. Today’s M cars – and M SUVs, we shouldn’t forget – are all brutally quick and extremely capable. But they aren’t the intimate driving machines they once were. The mission has been creeping; the plot, if not lost, then certainly mislaid.

So I very badly want the M2 not just to be great, but a very specific kind of great. I don’t just want a car that feels alive at crazy-quick speeds, but one that’s always alert and talking. One that’s friendly, not aloof. I suspect M is perfectly capable of building a car like that, but does it want to any longer? The cars it does build are selling in record numbers. M owns today. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a smart idea to build a car for those of us who instead want yesterday.

Photography: Barry Hayden

This feature was originally published in the April 2016 issue of Top Gear magazine.

This particular today, the sun rises on the M2 for my first sight of it. The proportions are squat and the light licks over its amply contoured sides, distended as they are to cover a significantly wider track than any other 2-Series. The rear wings are actually 80mm wider than normal. At the front, huge intakes gulp air that’s guided by scything aerofoils. Behind, M’s usual four tailpipes trumpet their audible and, equally, visual message. From no angle is it exactly beautiful, but from every one it looks like it determinedly means business, of the most engaging kind.

A good start. And it’s small. Much shorter than an M4, overall and in the wheelbase. That should by all rights make it more wieldy and lighter. Except that the M2, being the cheaper one, doesn’t have the exotic carbon-fibre body parts of the M4, so it ended up weighing, at 1,495kg, hardly any less. Ah well. It’s got a 3.0-litre six-cylinder engine of 370bhp and 369lb ft. (Actually the spec sheet says 343lb ft, but an overboost function can run for 30 seconds straight, and I can’t imagine a circumstance when you’d need longer.) The M4, which has two turbos and a significantly different engine, makes 431bhp. But the M2’s single-turbo engine isn’t just the standard BMW direct-injection double-VANOS 3.0-litre; it has M3 pistons and M3 main bearings, and a special exhaust. It also has cooling and oiling greatly upgraded for track work.

Let’s not fret in advance about the power decrement versus the M4, or indeed the smaller gap behind the Mercedes-AMG A45. This is still the sort of power number we got properly frothy about only a very few years ago. And a car that uses well its 370 is better than one that doesn’t know what to do with 400-plus. Besides, the spec sheet claims 0–62 in 4.3 seconds for the double-clutch version, and that’s perfectly urgent enough.

The advance publicity for the M2 spoke glibly about its using M4 suspension. But it’s not just a simple Frankencar, 4-Series below and 2-Series on top. Not least because the wheelbase is different, the suspension has been revised in all sorts of subtle ways, including springs and dampers and bushes. The dampers are non-adaptive, unlike the M4’s set. Michelin’s tyres are designed just for the M2. The electronically controlled locking diff has been remapped too, and the DSC.

A whole panoply of reasons to approach the M2 with an open mind, then.

We’re at the Laguna Seca racetrack, and I’ll be getting a helping of that. But it’s a road car, and the road is where my aching curiosity about the M2 lies – after all, M cars always show up well on a dry racetrack. BMW people helpfully suggest we set off up the Pacific Coast Highway. That road will be smooth, the views lovely, they say. Sorry, not going. The traffic will be heavy, and the police vigilant.

Instead, I aim the car inland toward a bumpy, heavily cambered and endlessly twisty road that runs for miles through a wooded valley. It has dips and crests and some very three-dimensional corners in endless variety and ever-changing radius. It also has some damp patches and surfaces from the quiet to the coarsely gravelly. In short, it’s going to give the car the Spanish Inquisition.

Right from the off, it’s clear the M2’s heart beats rapidly and its nervous system is alert. Its control arcs are quick and direct. Yet nothing is jumpy or falsely over-amplified. It’s all naturally progressive. Your initial staccato probings quickly evolve to a smooth and measured flow down the road, settling in without a complaint during the trip’s gentle beginnings in slow-moving convoys of excessively patient Americans. But even there, you’re feeling a two-way communication from the car and the road. Already it seems like it wants to team up and work with you.

Then the road empties, and the M2 starts to open its heart. The suspension is firm, for sure, but not harsh. This, despite the fact that, like the M4, it uses some ball joints on the suspension arms and parts of the front subframes are solid-bolted rather than rubber-bushed to the shell – all in the name of precision in the steering and tight control of wheel alignment. The thing just goes where it’s pointed, moving in exact and predictable proportion with your hands on the wheel. Stir up some more speed, and those front tyres cleave with epic determination to the line. That’s not the special bit, though. The first sign of the M2’s deep talent is the steering feel, the tingling of engagement that it wraps you in.

Since you’re so confident of the state of play down at the front tyres, you can joyfully get to work on the throttle and bring the rear end into play. Traction is generous almost to a fault, even when it’s bumpy, but gradually you can get the back to edge outward. As at the front, you’ve a delightfully transparent channel of messages to work with.

And right there, you have a car that’s separated itself from the M3 and M4. They are serious machines that demand skill and commitment. Under many conditions, I find I fall short. Their steering is more remote, their back ends prone to flicking sideways without due notice. They’re a challenge. The M2 is a game. It’s warm and tolerant, both of unpredictable roads and clumsy driving.

It stays friendly, even as the road taunts it with endless mid-corner bumps and diagonal crests. The damping and roll control are fabulous, always keeping the body in control and the tyres four-square. It tells you what’s going on because it’s all about dialogue, but it shrugs off the distraction and gets on with the underlying plot.

The engine is far more than a bit player in all this. It’s creamily well-mannered for dawdling, so you might wonder if it’ll have the ideal sharpness when you fully uncork it. It does, more or less. Below 3,000rpm it’s on the laggy side, but after that you’re on a level field of torque – it doesn’t swell charismatically towards the 7,000rpm red line, but it’ll go there obligingly. The light-throttle burble is elbowed aside by a blare in its high-rev excursions; hardly the most memorable noise M ever made, but, to be fair, it sounds a whole lot better than the turbo fours we’re used to in this kind of car.

The manual gearbox suits it well – the shift nicely oiled and the ratios stacking closely enough to be covered by the engine’s torque spread. And the four-piston brakes wash away speed with the power you want and the straightforward progression you hardly notice.

Back at Laguna Seca, I’m in an M2 with the optional double-clutch seven-speed for laps of the track. Sure enough it whip-cracks through the gears, up or down. That uninterrupted power buys you quicker acceleration than the manual, and it needs less brain effort, so you can devote more to the other overwhelmingly busy tasks piled upon you by this remarkable circuit. It lies in wait with tightening corners and stomach-inverting changes of elevation.

Out here on the wide and fast tarmac, the M2 never wilts. The e-diff locks a bit to help keep you stable in the places where you need to brake deep into corners, yet on others where you need quick turn-in, it’s as agile as the short wheelbase suggests, because the diff stays open. The balance mid-corner is spot-on. Or it’s happy to give you options. Under throttle, you’ve got that same determined traction that’s such an asset on the road. Lift a bit then get back on the power, and it’ll go into proper oversteer, either a quick dab if you’ve got the traction control in the Sport+ mode, or if it’s switched off, then here comes all the drift you could want, easily initiated, balanced and caught. If your aim is the carefree torching of tyres, no other car I can recall leads you by the hand like this one does.

But when all that’s over, it’s a 2-Series. Its cruising or commuting manners are perfectly urbane, the ergonomics are spot-on and the interior quality is fine, if not quite now at Audi level. Grown-ups can just about get in the back. They’ve decorated the cabin for M duty: the sports seats are terrific, Alcantara trims the doors, and the steering wheel rocks the classic three-colour stitching. The connected navigation is standard, and it has a nifty Bluetooth hook-up to a GoPro, so you can see the camera’s view on the car’s screen. Another app gives speed/line/steering post-lap analysis.

You can add a tasty-sounding menu of aftermarket accessories from BMW M, including carbon aero body parts, adjustable suspension and a switchably louder exhaust. But much of it looks like money best left unspent. I’m not sure I could be trusted to adjust suspension to be better than the one that’s native to the M2.

This car just has a rightness to it, a feeling of straightforwardness and transparency. It’s supposed to be the most affordable M car, and much of that comparative simplicity comes from the need to take cost out. Of course it’s not so fast. But it’s more fun to nudge it up against the best speeds it can do, its engine working its heart out and the chassis straining every sinew – and telling you all about it. It’s less complex, less exotic and smaller than the others. Funnily enough, for those reasons and more, it’s not just the M car you can most afford.

It’s the one you most want.