Oh sweet god in the tumbleweeds, I’ve gone and drunk the Kool-Aid: I love this car. If the M2 isn’t the best damn all-around track rat and street-show-off BMW since the E30 M3—yes, including the 1 Series M coupe, its most direct ancestor—then there is no order in the universe.

    You seriously need this bad ride.

    No, it is not as fast as its bigger siblings, the M3 and M4. But it takes their best bits and adds them to a (slightly) smaller shell. It feels more nimble, more personal, a bit closer to being a sports car rather than a sport sedan. Sure, it’s still heavy at 3,450 ponds—that’s with the optional seven-speed double-clutch gearbox; the standard six-speed manual adds another 55—but it feels more nimble than the M4, which weighs just a few pounds more.

    Note that the engine designations may be what really set the two cars apart. The M4’s S55 engine is a true BMW M GmbH rompin’, stompin’, fire-breathing scorcher, with two busy little turbochargers; it’s really more like the N54 twin-turbo engine that was so enjoyed in the 1 Series M Coupe. Perhaps the Naming Committee felt that since the two baby huffers weighed just about as much as the single turbo in the N55-engine 335i, that nomenclature was a closer fit.

    In any case, the N55B30T0 engine in the M2 carries just one twin-scroll turbocharger, but it enjoys a few morsels from the S55 plate, like oil-scavenging pickups and various hop-up elements that we won’t go into here, since today’s sermon is all about the driving. Suffice it to say that the little beastie makes 365 useful horsepower, with 343 pound-feet of torque—369 when you mash your foot to the floor for a bit of overboost.

    You do not want to do this in the middle of a corner.

    Or maybe you do; in Sport Plus mode, or if you’ve held down the Kill Me Now button for five seconds and cancelled everything—including rev-matching in the six-speed—then you can light up the Michelin Pilot Sports to your heart’s content. Too much of such behavior, however, will get you tossed out of Laguna Seca, where the M2 was finally handed over to the running-dog lackeys of the press to evaluate last week. The cars in pit lane were all equipped with the seven-speed double-clutch boxes, no doubt to save on the bills for journalist-fried clutches.

    On the track, the M2 will bring tears of joy: At last, a reasonably fast car without the intimidation factor of, say, an M5. I do not have to be the fastest driver around a track like Laguna Seca, but I have to feel confident that my abilities and the car’s are compatible. I believe that I could happily spend a day in this car honing my line and trying new approaches to corners I’ve driven for decades, without ever feeling that I was over my head.

    The M2 has enough torque to kick out a bit if you try to pinch it in too much on the exit of the infamous Turn Two, a corner I hate like a festering boil. Hint: Get rid of Two as quickly as possible and start your run to Three. Hint #2: If you start hammering it toward Three before you are finished with Two, you will look properly impressive as you cock the car slaunchwise, but you won’t really be as fast as the driver with more efficient track-management skills.

    Bill Auberlen, who spent the day driving a pace car—believe me, with Auberlen at the wheel, you will never have to complain that the pace car was holding you back—claimed that he put over 700 miles on his M2 leading journos around the track, but I have my doubts. Whatever the number, it’s pretty impressive that the little rat could endure an all-day hammering without protest. Just a few laps on my M Performance brake pads brought out their noisier side; they sounded like the Porterfield R4s on my rally car, and I started to sniffle from nostalgia.

    But as nifty as it is on the track, most buyers will find the M2 an ideal sporting ride for the roads and highways—just about any roads and highways. Fortunately, our day with the car included a chance to explore the roads around Laguna Seca. I can’t think of many better places to launch an M car, especially this one, as Monterey County features many miles of twisty roads that wind their way through the oak-covered hills. For this part of the launch, manual-transmission cars were available if you queued up early and fought off insurgents—I DON’T CARE IF IT IS THE LAST CAR, DAMMIT, I NEED A MANUAL—until you got the key fob in your sweaty mitts.

    It’s been a couple of years since I first drove the M4 on the roads of Portugal, but I remember feeling that the M4 was a bit large for those roads; the M2 may not really be all that much smaller, but it feels smaller, and it’s easier to stay on your own side of the road through a blind corner without feeling like you’re about to take out the ferns. [NOTE TO COLLEAGUE COMING THE OTHER WAY IN AN X4 M40i WHO LATER WHINED ABOUT MEETING US ON THE ROAD: IT’S NOT A ONE-WAY ROAD, YA MOOK. DRIVE WITHIN YOUR LIMITS AND STAY ON YOUR OWN @#$$! SIDE OF THE ROAD!]

    Now, I was not at the wheel during this little showdown—that would be Sam Smith—but here’s the thing: I did not even recall the encounter. This tells you that our M2 must have been totally safe on its own side of the road, because I assure you that if Sam had been squirreling around, I would have been pounding on his arm YOU’RE GOING TO KILL US ALL and pleading for him to respect the white line (which I will admit did not exist in some places—hey, narrow, remember?). And if I had seen a white X4 about to head-on into an interesting explanation, I surely would have shrieked in a coloratura soprano.

    Of course, my whinging colleague—a younger man, I assure you; what are they making them out of these days, butter?—may well have encountered a different M2 on that route, if, like me ’n’ Sam, another crew eschewed the suggestions in the routebook and found their own path to adventure; how were we to know that we were on the route of the oncoming X4 M40i clan?

    I suppose I am just saying that the M2 is a delight to drive briskly through the boonies with its almost-square 265/245 Michelin Super Sports. There is a smidgen of understeer—make that two smidgens on the track—but it is easily dealt with. The acceleration is perfectly adequate, especially when you invoke those extra overboost torquinis. Zero to sixty is just over four seconds with the dopplebanger seven-speed, somewhat slower if you insist on three pedals.

    Although some of my crotchety colleagues complained that the ride is too firm in Comfort, I reminded them of the E46 M3, a dental device designed to remove fillings at every railroad crossing. Even in Sport, I believe I could drive the M2 for about eight hours on American roads without undue discomfort, and so could you.

    Just watch out for oncoming X4s.—Satch Carlson