BMW M2 (2023) review: drifting off course?

This isn’t the kind of BMW M2 that we’re used to. The last one was small, potent and at the very peak of what an M car has always been. But this new one has some stats that suggest a new direction.

The M2 is an important car for BMW, as the previous one was both M’s most affordable car and its best seller, shifting almost 60,000 units over a seven-year run. But this new G87-generation M2 is 11cm longer, 150kg heavier and way costlier than its predecessor at £66,430 (or £65,885 for the paddle-shift auto).

Is this a case of mission creep? Or has BMW managed to ensure that its smallest M car is still one of its most fun?

What do you get for the extra money?

For a start, the new M2 looks like Lego Technic made a model of the previous one, but I’m warming to the bold design – even if the rear is very angle sensitive. Beyond that it feels really mature, which probably isn’t on your M2 bingo card if you’ve driven the at times thuggish previous model.

You sit pretty low in a cabin that feels broader than a 33mm increase in overall width suggests, ensconced in comfortable M Sport seats whose pillowy bolsters grip you snugly about the middle. Your legs are dead ahead, the leather steering wheel nice to squeeze if something of a chubber, the M2’s driving position easy to bend to anatomical peculiarities. (The rear seats force six-footers to crouch like Gollum, though a 5cm increase in wheelbase does give you more room than before, plus the boot’s very generous.)

Overall quality feels high, with BMW’s Curved Display infotainment system the centre of attention, amping up the slick, modernist feel. It’s your gateway to a light-years more configurable M2 than we’ve previously known – steering, dampers, throttle, brakes, ESC… all of it can be tweaked from here, plus there’s 10-stage traction control, even software to rate your drifts. Thankfully preferences can be stored in the M1 and M2 red missile launchers on the steering wheel.

There’s the same hand-me-down logic for this M2 as the previous model, including a damper tune lifted from the M3 Touring, but this time the parts-bin commonality extends to the same rubber, same compound as the M3/M4 Competition, with 275-section 19s on the front and 285-section 20s for the rear (the last M2 couldn’t squeeze M3 rubber under its arches). The Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres we’re driving on are standard, though sticky Cup 2s are also available.

Let’s get started!

Press the little red starter button and you wake a double-turbo six that purrs through quad exhaust outlets, smooth and warm like velvet straight from the tumbler. The 3.0-litre unit makes 454bhp – 49bhp up on the last M2, 49bhp shy of the latest M3/M4 twins – with torque unchanged at 406lb ft. Depress the clutch, slot first gear – yep, manual – and we’re away.

After spending some time finding that it has excellent straight-line stability (if not outright thrills) at speed, I take advantage of some hillside roads. I’m relieved and astonished at how reactive the front end feels, jinking left and right to tiny steering adjustments like it’s trying to wrong-foot its own reflection.

This car’s so stable that when I briefly release the steering through a long corner, it holds its line, self-centring naturally if only gently. No, it’s not big on feel, but it’s pure, consistent and – in Sport mode – nicely weighted. The current M3 and M4 exude a similar calm.

The last M2 felt quite raw, with a choppier ride on fixed dampers and a decent fizz of road noise, but this replacement is full of doughy compliance on adaptive dampers in Comfort mode, snuffs out extraneous noise and elevates the underplayed if gorgeously smooth straight-six tone higher in the mix.

What about if you push it harder?

Select Sport and there’s a little more chop to the ride, but ‘consistent’ is the more appropriate adjective – the M2 settles out of compressions like a gymnast nailing a perfect landing, and the steering is so pure and free of kickback that you can commit to a line with total confidence. Given similar stick, the previous M2 felt clumsier.

It all goads you to dig into the throttle early. When you do, the rear end stands to attention like a drill sergeant reporting for duty – the diff tightening, alert to the throttle and ready to be driven hard while you work against monster traction. It feels a more playful, nimbler M3. I’d have guessed it was much lighter.

If performance felt ho-hum in a straight line, a twistier road like this reveals a surplus, and brings into sharp focus what a leap this S58 engine is over the old S55. Drive quickly and you’ll instinctively want to hold out for higher revs rather than short shift, the turbo delivery building into something closer to the old M feeling.

The manual’s no benchmark for slickness, and in traffic you’ll need a deft touch if you’re to avoid making a hash of it, as the clutch is reasonably meaty, with a relatively high biting point, and the shift demands a positive action. But that’s part of the art and up here, away from the stop and the start, it all clicks – positive clutch, tight throw, pedal placement by people who heel-and-toe their way the supermarket.

Piece it all together and you squeeze the brake and blip the throttle on the downchange, roll the M2 hard into a corner, then smear lines over the surface on the way out (love the thundery trill when you snap shut the throttle, too). I just wish this otherwise excellent engine was more responsive below 3000rpm – it takes longer to wake up the M2’s playful balance than I’d like.

BMW M2: verdict

I can gripe, but the fact is I really enjoyed driving the M2, certainly more so than the previous F87 model. Some of the raw honesty and compactness of that car is gone, and the new one weighs and costs too much, but the G87 is the more polished and better resolved machine – exciting and incredibly capable when you’re driving for fun, surprisingly refined and sophisticated when you just want miles to melt away.

In an era where it must share a stage with a plug-in hybrid SUV, the new M2 feels like a more grown-up version of a reassuringly familiar formula, an evolution at a time of radical reinvention. I’ll take mine with the manual gearbox, please.

Specs