The Most Potent And Exhilarating M3, Ever

Considering the vast engineering investment committed by German companies to battery-electric cars, we should all give thanks to the Almighty God of Speed for the arrival of a new and brilliant BMW M3 and its 2-door brother, the M4.

M3 arrives this spring in two distinct flavors, with an all-wheel drive version promised for the summer. The “Core” rear-wheel drive M3 with manual gearbox and 473 horsepower variant of the twin-turbo 3-liter straight-six engine is aimed at buyers like me who enjoy working three pedals for dawn patrol and daily service, and who have less interest in absolutist power for track day events. BMW expects the Core model to tally about 12 percent of M3 sales.

M3 Competition and the upcoming M3 Competition with X-drive share a 503-horsepower version of the same straight six, and combined will account for nearly 90 percent of M3 sales worldwide. The biggest M3 market by far is America, and a goodly portion of those will be released into the wilds of my native Los Angeles. Coastal California is M Country.

M3 Competition can be quick off the line, under 4 seconds to 60 mph, but this car is all about the hunt, about agility, a carefully considered man-machine relationship, and carrying speed into corners, performing with style from 20 mph up to triple digits. It sounds absurd to call a car with over 500 horsepower a “momentum” car, but in some regards it is.

In fundamentals, M3 Competition remains true to origins, but in the age of instant-on turbocharging, it evolves beyond M heritage. In the 1990s I spent considerable seat time in the 282-horsepower six-cylinder E36 M3, first as a magazine editor, and then driving an M3 purchased as a dynamic benchmark for a performance car engineering and marketing group that had tenuous hold on me for a few years. For those not old enough to remember, no less than Ferrari bought E36 M3s to benchmark dynamics in the mid 1990s, when Montezemolo reinvigorated Ferrari. That E36 3-liter straight six was naturally aspirated and classically sweet, singing a beautiful song. The E36 is much prized and will eventually achieve collector car status.

By comparison, this new twin-turbo 3-liter has 221 more horsepower, and 243 more lb. ft. of torque than the E36. Ahh, the wonders of contemporary turbocharging. But rather than sweet and lyrical, the M3 Competition’s exhaust sound is a hard-edged yowl, the engine’s song downright vicious—mechanical battle cry, not romantic serenade. M3 Competition is like other track-focused road cars we’ve seen in recent years: a war machine on-track, but able to serve every day thanks to layers of suspension damping and powertrain calibration that soften the edges at the press of an iDrive controller. Smart concessions to civility.

Two red levers rest just above the steering wheel spokes, M1 and M2. Press and hold to capture preferred calibration presets that can be defined on the center-dash screen. By the end of my first day, M1 was SPORT in all four settings (Engine, Chassis, Steering, Brake) and M2 flipped Chassis to COMFORT, to eliminate kidney punching through the leather-lined and thinly padded carbon-fiber front chairs. With snow and rain in the upper reaches of the mountains, I never much explored the Sport Plus setting, which is for track duty, allowing considerable drifting and sliding.

Unique M3 suspension is carried in a front sub-frame that attaches directly into the mainstream body architecture. M-car product development and assembly was integrated into BMW mainstream engineering years ago, when the company’s assembly lines grew flexible enough to accommodate flow of special M components. In this current 3-series, the mainstream engineers protected for the demands of M variants. It may seem an odd compliment for a hard-edged performance car, but M3 pirouettes with skill in the parking lot ballet, the deep wheel housings able to accommodate considerable steering angles even with massive 19-inch front wheel/tire.

Just as significant as the 503 horsepower, the 479 lb. ft. of torque is spooled up over a typically broad turbocharged range, from 2750 rpm up to 5500. Interesting that the horsepower peaks not far beyond, at 6250, which makes this engine much ado about torque. The engine will rev rapidly and smoothly to 7200, but on the hunt one realizes that redline is just to avoid upshifts mid-corner and the real playground is about 3500 to 6500 rpm. Very different from the 1990s E36 M3 that was about free-revving horsepower at higher revs. Turbocharging has changed the performance car world in the past decade.

All that torque is delivered through an 8-speed semi-auto gearbox. If I had to guess—tech issues prevented me from interviewing the engineers—the Core model has less power and torque due to torque capacity of the manual gearbox.

Once again, we Americans, the only people who still love manual gearboxes, should give thanks to the Almighty God of Speed and to BMW for being one of two companies still offering a tidy 3-pedal performance car. Like that other German company known for sporting vehicles that offer refined manual gearboxes, BMW expects about a 12 percent take rate on the manual.

The engine is a beast, more so when X-drive is added, and thus BMW had to add multiple braces under the hood to help stiffen the front architecture. The center and rear of the body structure also has bracing. For those who will wait, the X-drive is like most such systems in performance cars, feeding power to the front wheels in a virtual instant, but only when needed. The system is biased to rear-drive.

German, English, Japanese and Detroit luxury carmakers have attempted for several decades to duplicate BMW Motorsports’ engineering, financial and marketing success, in some cases buying up independent tuner firms to create in-house performance sub-brands. BMW has always proven a natural in this market, nothing forced or contrived. They know what they’re doing, and why. As it has been since the late 1980s, this game among the three German luxury sedan companies is BMW’s to lose or win. Right now, they’re winning.