BMW X2 M35i 2019 Review

It’s competent, it’s fast enough and it even handles pretty well, but what the hell is the BMW X2 M35i? I don’t know. It’s still a quality effort by BMW M, perhaps even more than usual, given the wishy-washy nature of the donor machine, with a reasonable ride, a strong, torquey motor and plenty of bite from the all-wheel drive. Quick compact coupe crossover or high-riding hot hatch, the hottest X2 joins the Australian range next month priced just under $70,000.

Remember when the BMW range was simple? You had 3, 5 and 7 Series sedans and wagons and some coupes. Life was nice. Life was easy.

Then came the SUVs, then four-door SUV ‘coupes’ and, eventually, the idea that SUVs were too high and sedans were too low, so an X2 was needed somewhere in the middle.

And then came the rationale that the X2’s problem was that it was too slow, not too low, so it got emmed. Now there’s the BMW X2 M35i and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why, even at $68,900.

The BMW X2 M35i is not a bad car – far from it. It’s actually quite good, within a narrow window and for a narrow range of customers.

But it’s one of the least convincing M cars because it suffers from the neither-fish-nor-fowl nature of the X2 itself.

The X2 earned the ire of driving fans, but because of its C-pillar-mounted BMW badge, rather than its crossover nature. The last car to wear its badge there was the glorious, achingly beautiful 3.0-litre CS from the 1970s, and the BMW X2 isn’t a 3.0-litre CS from the 1970s, even in M form.

Instead, it’s a strong, torque-rich junior crossover that’s been tied down so tautly that it’s now barely more than a tall hatchback. Its all-wheel drive system has been overhauled, with an electronically lockable front differential as the big-ticket item, and it’s both faster and stronger than it probably should be.

The four-cylinder petrol motor (the first four-pot to wear an M badge in 33 years) has been cranked up to 225kW and the torque figure is a boisterous 450Nm.

The torque is always the highlight of the power delivery, mostly because the engine feels happiest to live down where the torque chimes in, shuffling the 1620kg machine around with enthusiasm, all the time.

You can rev it higher, up to beyond where the power peaks, but by then the synthetic sound tuning is belting through the speakers and it all begins to feel like you’re in the automotive equivalent of an Axel F concert.

The M35i gains its edge over ordinary X2s with a reinforced crankshaft, new pistons and connecting rods, a tweaked turbo, new fuel-injection set-up and a bigger exhaust system to spit all those gases out.

It’s the first M Performance Automobiles four-cylinder engine, and that’s just super. It throws the SUV/SAV/crossover/coupe/hatch to 100km/h in 4.9 seconds before tapping out at a limited 250km/h, and that’s even better.

It has unusual strength from around 1600rpm, giving it enough oomph to dominate most traffic situations and avoid dozens of gearshifts a day.

That’s one of the good sides. The other is in its under-doings, with the BMW X2 M35i showing a surprising amount of dexterity in the business of getting into and out of corners. Dexterity, but not mountains of enthusiasm about it at all.

It can do it. It can almost do everything you’d possibly expect of a machine like this, and then some more.
This sort of attitude was once the realm of Mercedes-Benz, but now it has permeated the bastion of driving pleasure, so you wonder where it will end up if this is the trend line.

But it works all the same, with the eight-speed torque-converter automatic transmission containing a race-start function for reasons we can’t fathom, and a multi-plate all-wheel drive system.

The whole suspension system has been cooked a bit, too, with new M tuning for the MacPherson strut front and four-link rear-end, including stiffer dampers and spring rates and a lower ride height, plus 18-inch wheels and tyres.

That can be uprated to 19- or even 20-inch rims and tyres, and active dampers are another performance-critical option.

All this works pretty well, too, with remarkable body control and little in the way of a downward-pitching nose on braking or squat on acceleration. It just gets on with its work in a completely unfussed way.

The steering wheel’s rim is almost uncomfortably thick, but the car has terrific directional stability on highways and the system is well weighted and well judged.

There’s the ability for far greater precision here than you get with any other X2, which might well be the entire point of the M35i, and it holds true even in the wet.

The BMW X2 M35i is not super comfortable on troubled surfaces, though. The ride borders on uncomfortable, turning slight-looking irregularities into irksome jolts.

The car fidgets, squirrels and even tramlines, its behaviour taken over by the road’s inputs. The bigger the bump strike, the worse it is, and it’s particularly poor on square-edged holes, where the suspension has to droop quickly.

That said, the M35i always has a firm grip on the road for stopping, turning and going, and it never seems to get unsettled by anything upsetting it mid-corner.

It’s a nicer thing inside and out, too, with a rejig of its face for more cooling and what BMW calls an improved look to its oblong kidneys. The grille and the mirror caps both get grey trims, while there are twin exhaust pipes and a little spoiler atop the hatch roof.

It continues inside with M Sport stuff everywhere, mostly by the infection of M35i decals on just about any surface big enough to carry one. There are shift paddles behind the steering wheel, big bolstering on the front seats and M-stitched belts.

It scores the full suite of interior electronics and assistance systems, including a coloured head-up display and ConnectedDrive that keeps the car online all the time.

The optional damping is almost a no-brainer, though it’s expected to be significantly expensive, and the transmission is best left to its own devices rather than switched into the rougher, tougher Sport mode.

But at its heart lies a sometimes-uncomfortable reminder of where the car industry is going, with crossovers supplanting hatches and fast crossovers becoming the next new genre (see: Audi SQ2).

Clearly some car-makers are still learning what they should be and should drive like, because it feels like BMW left a fair bit of car on the table with this one. The BMW X2 M35i is not good or bad. It just is.

How much does the 2019 BMW X2 M35i cost?
Available: June
Price: $68,900 plus on-road costs
Engine: 2.0-litre inline turbo-petrol four-cylinder
Output: 225kW/450Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Fuel: 7.1L/100km
CO2: 161g/km
Safety rating: NA