Never let it be said that BMW doesn’t take every opportunity to improve its cars. The much-anticipated successor to the BMW 1M is the M2. It was scheduled to go into production in November with sales beginning early in 2016.
As yet, the M2 has not had an official launch. We know what it looks and sounds like only from spy photos and videos. Earlier this year, the consensus among industry observers was that BMW would reveal the newest M car at the Frankfurt International Auto Show in September, but that’s not going to happen. Perhaps in October.
BMW could have a dozen reasons why it is still testing the car on the Nürburgring’s Nordschleife: testing new parts, working out recently identified problems, nailing down lap times it could use in advertising purposes, or or even for racing car or parts development.
Whatever the reason, the driver of this partially camouflaged M2 is driving pretty close to the limit. See for yourself.
The M2 is expected to appear with a turbocharged, three-liter inline six pushing around 365 horsepower and about 350 pound-feet of torque. Mated to a standard six-speed manual transmission, the zero-to-60 time is speculated to be about 4.4 seconds; probably faster with the rumored optional seven-speed DCT transmission.
Almost as popular a question as when it will get here, is how much will it cost? All we can do now is guess. The base price of the M235i is $44,150 not counting destination and handling. The MSRP of a new BMW M4 is $65,400 without the added fees. If BMW plops the new M2 right in the middle of those two, it should retail for around $54,775. Perhaps to jump start sales—as if it needs to with the M2—BMW might bring it out a little lower than that, but again, this is all just a guess.
A better guess is that once people see the car for real, with no camouflage and available to order, and we find out what lap times the baby M car ran on the ‘Ring, it won’t make that much difference what it costs.—Scott Blazey
[Photo and video courtesy of cvdzijden.]
