Choosing between M siblings has never been so hard... especially when they’re cut from the same cloth
WORDS ROWAN HORNCASTLE PHOTOGRAPHY OLGUN KORDAL & JOHN WYCHERLEY
Don’t you think it’s interesting that we didn’t load a single Audi or Mercedes into our Scania-shaped toy boxes? We politely asked for an AMG One but Merc said no. What about the F1 tech-inspired hybrid C63? Merc said... no. How about Audi’s offer of a facelifted RS6/7? Well, they didn’t quite cut the mustard. Meaning we had to have a verbal punch-up in the office to see whether we should bring BMW’s new M3 Touring or its pugnacious sibling, the M2 Comp. We couldn’t decide – so here we are with both barrels of Bimmer.
That’s no bad thing as there’s more common DNA in this pairing than in M cars of the past and quite a lot to unpack. Parallels are naturally borne out of BMW’s decision to cut them from the same steely cloth, basing the new M2 chassis on slightly chopped underpinnings from an M3/4, rather than the old theory of beefing up a 1-Series. There’s shared hardware too, both being powered by the same torquetastic S58 3.0-litre twin-turbo straight six (tuned to 454bhp in the M2 and a sneeze over 500bhp in the M3), having the same adaptive suspension and the same smarter and rather racy carbon covered cabin.
But the M2 gets the bigger M car’s dumpy weight, all 1,700kg of it. And while both get an 8spd auto box as standard, for £545 extra BMW will fit the M2 with a 6spd manual. Which it has for us. And while the M2 has steel brakes, the M3 is on absolutely whopping (400x38mm fronts) £7,995 M carbon ceramic brakes. So it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other when it comes to spec. Either way, at over £86k for the M3 Touring and £65k for its younger brother, neither is cheap.
Yes, both cars are radical and visually overpowering with big grilles, squared intakes and a lot of LOOK AT ME. But haven’t you warmed to the M3 Touring’s face? I have. Do we just need another eight or so months looking at the M2 and we may ‘get’ it? Only time will tell.
But what to drive first? Do you swallow the cheaper, lesser powered RWD and manual red pill, or the more powerful, faster 4WD auto blue pill? When you’ve got a wild circuit like the Gotlandring with two distinctive and different sections, blind corners, huge elevation changes, zero runoff and a bloody ski jump to fire off, I go blue.
M-thusiasts have been kneeling by the side of their beds for literally decades praying for a bootiful
