THE NEW BMW ///M2 HAS ARRIVED AS A 353 KW, 600 NM RWD MANUAL PACKAGE.
Some cars have been so good over the years that they’ve ended up as benchmarks for other cars in the same class. In many cases, the benchmark car wears an ///M badge and hails from the performance side of the German automaker, BMW. You can buy any performance car you want, and someone in your group of friends will ask you how it fares against an M3. The M3 has always been the main one, but in recent years the rise in popularity of the M4 has sort of diluted that sentiment, as has the BMW M2. The size difference between the E36 M3 and the latest incarnation of the model is quite big, and for some people, it means the M3 is now too big. Of course, it has the power to shift a bigger body with ease, but for a few out there, myself included, a smaller M Performance car would be better. That’s where the M2 comes into play, it has all the tech and specs that you’d expect associated with an M-series car, but it has much more compact dimensions. It just looks like it will be more nimble and lighter, which translates to being faster and easier to reverse park. It’s also sort of like the adopted child in the family because it doesn’t share the same design architecture as the other popular M cars. You know when you visit a family and all the kids look like the dad, except one - that’s the BMW M2 and it’s not a bad thing. The 3rd generation of the compact M car has just been released and we’re happy to report that the rhinoplasty has been minimal and the car still doesn’t have that oversized kidney grille. The car definitely looks like there’s been an evolution of the styling, it’s trimmed and tucked and tweaked but it’s not so different that you have ask what it is. It’s probably more of a comprehensive update than an all-new model if we’re going on looks alone, but the car has seen things improve in every single aspect. One thing that keeps the BMW M2 popular amongst proper performance types is the fact that it can be had with a manual transmission, and that’s something that’s becoming increasingly rare these days. People get old and lazy and want autos, and so manufacturers have simply dropped the manual option. Also, no matter how fast people think they can drive ans swap cogs, there isn’t one alive who can out-shift a half-decent dual-clutch transmission.
The new BMW M2 sticks to the original recipe of a powerful inline-six engine, a six-speed manual gearbox and classical rear-wheel drive, this combination with the aforementioned compact dimensions and a near-perfect chassis makes for a special, fast car. There’s a novel dedicated to this car’s technology, driver aids and features, but performance is what it’s all about, so we’re only delving into the new BMW M2’s powerplant and drivetrain, because at the end of the day when cars like this launch, no one asks about the size of the infotainment screen. They want to know about performance figures, power, speed and of course, price. The brand’s much-loved powerplant is still what makes things tick in the BMW M2, it’s a twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre inline-6 and it can be had mated to either a 6-speed manual transmission or an 8-speed M Steptronic transmission and the power is sent to the rear wheels only. The package that’s comprised of a pair of mono-scroll turbochargers, an indirect intercooler, an electronically controlled wastegate, High Precision Injection, VALVETRONIC variable valve timing, Double-VANOS fully variable camshaft timing, a rigid crankcase with a sleeve-free and closed-deck construction, a forged lightweight crankshaft, iron-coated cylinder bores and a 3D-printed cylinder head core all works together to create 353 kW with 600 Nm of torque. Power is up a bit, and that means performance figures should come down, and they do, albeit it slightly. This new BMW M2 can do a 0-100 km/h launch in 4.0 seconds dead, which is 0.1 seconds quicker. It can run 4.2 seconds with the manual transmission. For a 0-200 km/h run, it happens in 12.9 seconds for the auto and 13.7 seconds for the manual and the top speed is limited to the usual 250 km/h mark. This is a BMW though and there are options for the options, and if you take the M Driver’s Package, the top speed rises to 285 km/h. It’s fast, it’s compact and it wears an M badge - it doesn’t get any cooler than that. There are a few awesome new colours available too which will look amazing when combined with the carbon fibre components that will soon be available for the car. Local pricing hasn’t been released yet, but it may just surpass the R1,485,000 price tag of the outgoing model.
Take a look at the YouTube video that shows off what we think is the coolest coupe in the M Performance series of cars, the BMW M2. Here you'll see the visual updates have created a rather damn good-looking car. What do you reckon? Should it have had the big kidney grille like the M3?: THE NEW BMW M2 COUPÉ. | BMW M
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