High hopes or hubris? We see if the new £40,000 BMW 1-series M Coupé is worthy of its M badge.
Good at spotting future classics, are you? Picking the models that will, one day, have collectors salivating over the originality of the boot carpet? I shouldn’t really be allowed anywhere near such topics without a responsible adult, although it is much harder than it looks. In 1987, though, I drove the original BMW M3, a car BMW is trying to emulate with its latest M-car, the 1-series M Coupé.
The original M3 was built to race. The road version was a necessity, sold to make the car eligible for competition. These days it is revered like a surviving Sixties supergroup drummer, so I scoured the loft for my 24-year-old notebook.
I praised the engine: “Remarkable, strong, revvy, well-mannered from below 1,000rpm – 18.5mpg on test.” I loved the agility (“big sideways meister”) and the steering, but the Getrag gearbox seemed vague, the price exorbitant and it only came in left-hand drive. “Most will go for the Ford Sierra Cosworth,” I wrote, “and the M3 will be unmourned, save by very few.”
How utterly wrong. Limited production, class-leading dynamics, that amazing Falkenhausen engine and an epic racetrack history mean the original M3 has become a much-coveted classic. As such, it is the target that enthusiasts want BMW to pepper with this new two-door.
It’s a big ask, too, because BMW’s chassis department hasn’t been on top form recently; the Z4 35is is one of the worst mannered cars in its class and the ride and handling of the company’s lower-order sport utilities haven’t been impressive, either.
Specification, pedigree and scarcity go a long way to determining how a car will go down in history. The BMW 1-series M Coupé starts with a leg up in the first instance, with a hybrid construction using the chassis and suspension from the larger M3 plus a modified, widened 1-series body. The tyres overhang the wheels and the wheel arches overhang the body. It looks good.
The cabin is equally simple and undemonstrative. Black leather, Alcantara and plastic predominate, relieved by orange stitching and some complementary blue on the steering wheel. Quality feels good and it is well put together, if austere.
The sports seats are manually adjustable and offer reasonable support, while the driving position is good, with decent adjustment to wheel and seat. The pedal box is too small for those with big feet and the contrasting pedal heights mean heel and toe gearchanges require a peculiar knack. The rear seats are cramped, although they fold down for high-speed wardrobe-carrying.
The straight-six engine starts with a mechanical rasp, which quickly settles to a booming idle. The clutch feels meaty, but not stiff, and the steering is positively weighted. You don’t need six months on the chest expander to drive the M Coupé, though. The gearlever has a short stroke and a mechanical-feeling change, and the engine is perfectly happy to pootle around town. Even in sixth, it will pick up below 1,500rpm, such is the flexibility of modern, twin-scroll turbos.
The cabin offers good front and rear visibility: the windscreen pillars might be thick, but they don’t impede the view. The brakes are strong, but over servoed and too sensitive. And while there’s a lovely on-centre feel from the steering, which lets you know just what is passing beneath those huge tyres, you’d have to be deaf not to hear their roar, which makes a mockery of the £765 Harman Kardon loudspeaker option. The ride quality, too, is harsh over surface changes.
Unlike most souped-up engines, this BMW 3.0-litre straight-six is just there, murmuring gently, ready for the call in any gear and at any speed. This extraordinary, turbine-like urge is not at all like the old M3, with its hot cams and whirring chain drive, yet the M Coupé’s revs will climb to an astonishing 7,000rpm before the limiter cuts in. Your first overtaking manoeuvre is so ridiculously easy it’s hard not to laugh. It’s perhaps a bit quiet compared with the opposition, but there’s a deep-throated resonance when it gets to 3,000rpm and a classy wail up past 6,000.
It makes for an addictive drive and the M Coupé never spurns its driver’s call for more speed, or more side loading, but gives little indication you are nearing the limit. Only a flickering yellow dashboard lamp shows that the ESP system is shepherding the potential slides.
The steering becomes less communicative as speed increases and the chassis can feel slightly snappy, dancing on sharp undulations, firing its wheels up into the arches and giving the ESP a lot of work.
Unlike the old E30 M3, the M Coupé has no race campaign in sight and feels more like a road car specified for the track. Almost 25 years on the M Sport premise has been inverted: instead of BMW working out how few it needs to build to go racing, it figures out how many it can build while keeping an exclusive mystique.
In the UK that figure is 450 and more than 300 have already been sold. Make no bones about it, this is a fantastic car (ride quality notwithstanding), capable of covering serious distances with the added practicality of rear seats and a decent boot.
It will also deliver thrilling track days and it is hard to believe that some won’t eventually be campaigned with numbers on the sides.
So it’s back to business as usual for the M Sport badge. It’s a welcome return.
THE FACTS : BMW 1-series M Coupé
Tested: Six-cylinder, 2,979cc petrol with twin turbochargers. Six-speed manual transmission, rear-wheel drive
Price/on sale: £40,020/now
Power/torque: 340bhp @ 6,000rpm/ 332lb ft @ 1,500rpm
Top speed: 155mph
Acceleration: 0-62mph in 4.9sec
Fuel economy: 20.8mpg/29.4mpg EU Urban/Combined
CO2 emissions: 224g/km
VED band: K (£790 first year, £445 thereafter)
Verdict: Astonishingly fast and great fun to drive, a fitting testament to the M Sport badge
Telegraph rating: Four out of five stars
source : The Telegraph
