BMW M2 2023 Review – International

If your milk prices have gone up and your bread has gone up, you’d better believe the 2023 BMW M2 has gone up. And how.

Where the 2016 BMW M2 started at $86,915 (and looks increasingly like a bargain), this one will arrive at [pauses for you to sit down] $119,900 plus on-road costs.

That’s $25,000 north of the M240i xDrive in the same bodyshell and $20,000 up on the 2018 BMW M2 Competition.

That’s partly because businesses the world over are unashamedly harvesting profits, especially on premium products, and partly because the M2 genuinely uses more expensive pieces than its predecessor.

It’s effectively an M4 with rear-wheel drive only, and in a shorter body.

BMW also claims that standard Australian M2s will use all the good jelly from the European options list, including the carbon-fibre roof and a free choice of a six-speed manual or an eight-speed automatic.

Even so, place an order today and you’ll be lucky to see your M2 before Q1 next year.

BMW Australia insists it will bring a surprising amount of standard equipment with the 2023 BMW M2, and it should for that price.

Europeans, at least, get a seating layout that is fully manual, with electric seats and heated seats being optional.

It also comes standard with the M Professional navigation system, and it has M-specific readouts for the instrument cluster, the multimedia system and the optional head-up display.

There’s also an M Lap Timer and, in case you forgot it was rear-wheel drive, an M Drift Analyser, to help you improve your drifting (in closed, controlled conditions, obviously).

A three-zone climate control system is standard, along with rain-sensing wipers and heated side mirrors.

The 2023 BMW M2 is based entirely on the M240i, with a lot of M3 and M4 stuffed into it, so while it has yet to be independently crash tested, there’s no reason to suspect it won’t retain the donor car’s five-star NCAP rating.

While we still wait on BMW Australia’s final specification, even the European cars have parking distance control and active cruise control that includes stop-go/feet-free driving and four levels of preferred distances.

There is also collision warning technology with autonomous braking.

Options for most of the world include lane departure warning (plus lane return, to bring you back to where you should be), rear cross traffic warning and braking (though this is standard on a cut-price Volkswagen Polo, so do better, BMW), lane change warning, a reversing assistant camera and parking assistant to park for you.

There are front airbags and side airbags for the driver and front passenger and head airbags for all four seats.

For many people, the coolest part about the 2023 BMW M2 is that it is still offered with either an eight-speed automatic transmission or a six-speed manual gearbox, with three pedal and lots of rowing.

There’s something reassuringly old-school about that, and it is likely to be the very last manual gearbox BMW ever puts behind an engine, so get in early, if that’s your thing.

The wrinkle is that the M2 isn’t as good as a manual. It’s just not.

It’s as though BMW stopped developing the manual gearbox half a decade ago, except for a small team whose mission it was to make it feel progressively worse each generation to guarantee nobody will miss it when it goes.

The Getrag six-speeder feels worse to use than such things did in BMWs 20 years ago. The shifts are notchy and baulky every time the lever crosses any gate, the throws are unpleasantly indirect and the clutch pedal’s take-up point is high and offers scant feedback about when things are engaging or disengaging.

On the other hand, the automatic snaps through gears beautifully and cleanly, shifts when you would ask it to anyway, can be operated by paddle or stick shifting, and is both faster and more economical than its tri-pedal sibling.

The auto gets to 100km/h in 4.1 seconds instead of the manual’s 4.3, and it reaches 200km/h in 13.5 seconds – a full eight-tenths quicker.

It’s worse in rolling acceleration, where a fourth-gear punch from 80-120km/h sees the auto with a 1.2sec advantage (2.9sec), and in fifth it has a 1.8sec advantage.

I suspect 100 per cent of the manual buyers will grab them for emotional reasons, and at least 70 per cent of them will regret it.

Adopting the M3/M4’s engine in a much smaller package makes the 2023 BMW M2 exactly what American muscle cars used to be: outrageously overpowered in a relatively light machine.

“Relatively” is the active word here, because just two doors and four seats weighs in at 1725kg (auto), and most of that relates to the engine, the stuff needed to cool the engine and the stuff needed to make the M2 slow down and manage to corner after the engine has done its worst.

The 3.0-litre inline six-cylinder engine will be one of BMW M’s last non-hybridised powertrains, with a pair of monoscroll turbochargers helping it to 338kW of power and 550Nm of torque, and it all drives through an M Active differential on the rear axle.

The added weight, and the lack of electrification, mean the 2023 BMW M2 isn’t stupendously efficient.

The M2 is now 1700kg as a manually shifted coupe, up from 1550kg in the first-generation M2. The eight-speed auto version weighs even more, at 1725kg (up from 1575kg).

The issue is that the M2 is effectively a short-wheelbase M3/M4, complete with M3/M4 suspension pieces, the same engine and the same gearboxes. It’s effectively stuffing a mid-sized car into a small-sized car, and that’s heavy.

That, and there is a lot of power here, leads it to a WLTP consumption rating of 9.6L/100km and CO2 emissions of 218g/km for the auto. The manual is higher at 10.0L/100km and 226g/km.

There’s a lot to like about the 2023 BMW M2, and not much to dislike.

It does a brilliant job of hiding just how heavy it is, and the mass is the obvious thing to hate on here because you know it’s going to chew up brake pads and tyres, at best.

But the pieces that shone in the last car, that delicate balance, its mid-corner poise, its ability to be either driven straight and fast or loose and crazily, and its sheer, shock punch, well, they’re all still here.

Its grip levels from the 19-inch front and 20-inch rear tyres are tremendous, whether it is in braking, cornering, accelerating or transitioning between any or all three states, and it does it all with such assurance that the driver absolutely knows the only way it will break free is if they want it to.

The rumble of the engine as it starts speaks to genuine menace, and it’s nobody’s junior M car in attitude, engineering or aggression.

It has such incredible punch off the line for a rear-driver that it can comfortably pull around 1g on take-off, and we saw more than 1.25g on both the left and right cornering, plus the braking.

Chasing more grip doesn’t always make a better sports car, but it doesn’t harm the M2.

Its wide range of driver settings, and the ability to turn off all the software nets (now via a much more convoluted path), leaves its pure engineering exposed to play with.

And that’s how it feels. It’s never a threatening car to drive. It just begs to be turned loose to play.

The brakes are strong and consistent, with a solid pedal feel and height, and the throttle pedal response is snappy-fast and helps the driver to balance it all out on long corners, or to finely judge the grip on short ones.

If you can criticise it, it doesn’t quite have the delicacy of the old car, and that’s just the weight dulling the responses and reactions by the last couple of per cent.

But there is not a single thing it does poorly, and it’s impossible to climb out of without smiling.

There are upsides to the extra weight of the 2023 BMW M2, and one of those is interior space.

Not that the first-gen M2 was small inside, but the second generation is larger again, with a more adult interior layout, a better level of dash and screen technology and space to grow.

The car is 4580mm long (up 119mm on the old car) and it has another 54mm of length in the wheelbase. It’s also 33mm wider (but 7mm lower at the roofline), so there is more legroom, headroom and shoulder-room for every seat.

Up front, there’s a 14.9-inch instrument cluster and 12.3-inch multimedia touch-screen, both secure behind a single curved piece of glass.

It uses Bluetooth, wireless charging and telephony, and has two USB ports as standard, and it responds to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

The roof can be fixed, or there are two options: a sliding glass roof or a fixed carbon-fibre roof.

There are options, because that’s what BMW is known for, and they include a Harman Kardon surround-sound system and a Live Cockpit Plus set-up that brings a head-up display with it.

The standard seats are fine, but lack the outright lateral grip to cope with the M2’s extremes of performance, so the optional carbon buckets are better and 10.8kg lighter, even though they’re clad in merino leather.

There is a 40/20/40 split in the rear seat, and there is 390 litres of luggage space hiding behind it.

Oh, lordy, wordy yes, you should buy a 2023 BMW M2, if you can still grab an allocation for one.

It’s like the old one, but more grown up where you want it to be, without being too grown up where you don’t.

It’s surprisingly practical, with proper seating for four people, and has reasonable luggage space, all in a package that handles superbly and behaves like an M4 that doesn’t take itself so seriously.

This thing will be a collector’s item.

Hell, get two and wrap one in plastic for a decade.

2023 BMW M2 at a glance:
Price: $119,900 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Second half of 2023
Powertrain: 3.0-litre six-cylinder twin-turbo petrol
Output: 338kW/550Nm
Transmission: Six-speed manual/eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 10.0L/100km manual, 9.6L/100km auto (WLTP)
CO2: 226g/km manual, 218g/km auto (WLTP)
Safety rating: Not tested