Here’s more evidence to support some BMW enthusiasts' contention that the 2 Series is the new 3 Series: Car & Driver magazine named the M235i to its 10-Best Car list for the second year in a row. The significance of a 2 Series model making the list is only slightly more significant than the fact that the 3 Series, which was a regular on the list for decades, was missing from the list—again.
The BMW 3 Series didn’t just appear on the list for a long time; it ruled the list. From 1992 to 2014, the BMW 3 Series/4 Series/M3 was a Car & Driver 10Best Car for 23 of those years. That’s all of them. The next car with the most 10Best appearances is the Honda Accord, with 19 years on the list.
But, rather than concentrate on why the 3 Series didn’t make the list, let’s look at why the M235i did.
The Car & Driver editors like the M235i because it drives like a BMW; for example, how the road feel is transmitted to the driver, and how the pedal placement facilitates braking and downshifting. To quote Car & Driver, “It’s the sort of stuff that always seemed so natural to the marque’s cars that one assumed the engineers didn’t even sweat it, that this sort of correctness was baked into Bavarian genes sometime in the Middle Ages and only revealed itself upon the advent of the automobile.”
Senior online editor Joe Lorio wrote that the M235i, “Exhibits the kind of focus that one used to take for granted in a BMW.” Hmm, could that be a hint about why this 2 Series model made the list but the 3 Series didn’t?
Car & Driver said the M235i is compact and livable. We wonder if they considered the 3 Series “compact” when it lived on the 10Best list, since the third-generation 3 Series was almost exactly the same size as the current 2 Series is now. It’s also only slightly smaller than the E46 3 Series and compares very favorable to the E46 M3 in power and performance. Apparently, Car & Driver has a good memory and hasn’t forgotten how much it loved those M cars.
The M235i’s 320-horsepower, three-liter TwinPower Turbo six-cylinder engine is “sweet and smooth” and its ride is a bit more confortable than BMW's current larger and truer M fraternal twins—the M3 and M4.
Just as the E36 and E46 M3s were described as go-anywhere, do-anything cars that were equally at home running the track, going to the grocery store, or cruising the interstates, Car & Driver praised the M235i as “the right automobile for just about any road, whether your daily commute is a stoplight horror or the sort of Alpine pass that BMW engineers slalom home on after heli-skiing weekends.”
To make the M235i the best it can be without spending more money than is necessary, the Car & Driver editors would opt for the limited-slip differential and would choose just the heated seats versus the entire Cold Weather package. They would also equip it with summer tires and a six-speed manual transmission, both for obvious reasons.
Base price on the BMW M235i is $45,145. The way Car & Driver would set it up would cost $48,885.
The other cars on the 2016 Car & Driver 10Best Cars list include:
Cadillac CTS Vsport
Chevrolet Camaro
Ford Shelby Mustang
Honda Accord
Mazda MX-5 Miata
Mazda 3
Porsche Boxster/Cayman
Tesla Model S 70/70D
Volkswagen Golf/GTI/Golf R
Now that the suspense for 2016 is over, we have a year to wait for the 2017 10Best list. We can’t help but wonder if the 3 Series/4 Series has a prayer of making a comeback to the list, or whether the real drama next year will be if the new BMW M2 replaces the M235i as a Car & Driver favorite. Of course, there’s nothing that says they both can’t be on the list.—Scott Blazey
[Photos courtesy of Car & Driver.]
