Ah, poor BMW. They truly are one of the greats. Perhaps they’ve lost their way a little bit. It’s a bit like someone’s blindfolded them and then spun them around and round on the spot for about half a minute.
Currently BMW is stumbling, out of control, towards an uncertain fate. It is a bit of a painful thing to see when you see BMW’s back catalogue of solid engineering, that has been such a touchstone for the automotive sector for 60 years now.
Unfortunately, we’ve got to investigate another period of history where BMW just didn’t cut the mustard – perhaps the mustard in Bavaria is particularly stoic.
In this edition of BMW Set in Stone we’ll be looking into the how BMW’s own naming conventions prevented us from getting another potentially excellent car.
It all starts with the BMW 1-Series. You know the one, the second version of the rear-drive hatchback. In 2012 a fairly excellent sports version was released – the M135i. It had 330ish BHP and a nice, silky smooth 3 Litre six-cylinder engine. Then came the 2-Series, which took the mechanical innards from the 1-Series and popped them into a far more conventional three box body.
Then a M235i emerged and BMW seemed to really recapture some of its cheap, six-cylinder mojo. Next were the M140i and M240i, which boasted a little more power, and both were seriously quick cars, but neither were fully fledged ‘M’ cars.
Then came the M2, which has been an absolute runaway success since it first emerged in 2015. Fast and fun, small enough to play with, but sophisticated enough to require significant excavation to explore its dynamic range.
The M2 is a great car – but we could have gotten something so much cooler.
Just imagine the drivetrain of the M2 in the body of a 1-Series. Ohh, it would have been just too good. Flared arches, big breaks, swollen tyres – even with all of these things it still would have been far more subtle than the punchy M2.
Except once again, BMW’s own pride and heritage got in the way.
They couldn’t call it an M1 – that’s taken by BMW M’s original car, and they couldn’t call is the 1M either as that was already taken too.
Therefore we actually reached a point where we were potentially denied an amazing everyday/family car because of BMW’s rigid approach to its historical nomenclature.
Ah well – perhaps another day.
Kerbside 