BMW M2 Review 2024

The first BMW M2 of 2016 was a huge success, becoming the biggest-selling M car of all. Now a new BMW M2 has arrived, aiming to deliver the same beguiling, road and track-day sorcery. Does it deliver? Let’s hope so, because this is one of the last rear-wheel-driven, manual-gearboxed cars BMW will ever build. Our BMW M2 review will reveal all.

Firstly, with the BMW 1 Series platform now front-wheel drive, the new BMW M2 is built on a shortened version of the BMW 3 Series and BMW 4 Series platform, making it somewhat larger and less shrink-wrapped than its predecessor, and, at 1725kg, heavier too.

Its looks divide opinion wherever it goes. We’re not entirely sold, but would concede that it’s very colour sensitive. The baby blue specimen we drove looked like something from a Hot Wheels set, and almost plasticky in appearance.

The interior is well screwed together but not, in truth, entirely to our taste. We just can’t warm to BMW’s awful driver’s instrument display, with the now almost residual ‘dials’ shaped to ape the outer edges of the kidney grille.

The first point of contact isn’t great, either. The steering wheel has a hippo-fat rim with bingo wings on the inner circumference at exactly the point where those who want to hold it at ten to two cannot now do so with any comfort. A sensible, thinner rimmed Alcantara no-cost option would be welcome.

The driving position is otherwise first class, although you may have trouble escaping from a bucket seat with prominent wings. Sitting on the side bolster when exiting is unavoidable, and it’ll try to cut your backside in half.

Unless you’re a toddler, do not attempt to gain access to the rear seats without planning plenty of time to extricate yourself at the end of the journey. Boot space, on the other hand, is fine at 390 litres; less than a Mercedes AMG CLA 45 S, more than an Audi RS3 saloon.

Under the bonnet lurks the marvellous three-litre, twin-turbo straight-six already doing sterling service in the BMW M3 and BMW M4. It has been mildly dialled down in the BMW M2, delivering ‘only’ 460PS and 550Nm of torque, and dispatching the 0-62mph dash in just 4.1 seconds.

An eight-speed automatic transmission with flappy paddles driving the rear wheels only is standard fit, but a six-speed manual is a £545 option in the UK.

Other technical highlights include wide M3/M4 axles, 19-inch front and 20-inch rear tyres, a limited slip differential, stiffer springing and adaptive dampers fitted as standard, plus anti-roll bars.

As with other M-cars, you can mix and match modes for the dampers, steering, engine response, brake pressure and traction control. Happily, you can store your favourite settings and then access them via the M1 and M2 tabs on the steering wheel to avoid rummaging through the menus again. 

After experiencing the extraordinary grip and poise offered by the all-wheel drive BMW M240i, we worried that the rear-drive-only BMW M2 might struggle to match its lesser sibling’s composure. We need not have worried.

The steering is nicely weighted and feels super-precise, while active damping allows the suspension to offer a delightful meld of superior body control and supple ride which, though firm, never makes things uncomfortable. There’s stacks of grip, and the brakes are immense. 

Indeed, so well sorted is the BMW M2 that you can travel at prodigious pace with consummate ease. Moreover, with its relatively small footprint making it feel quite at home on your favourite B-road, it’s outrageous fun too. And, of course, it’s accompanied by the perfectly pitched vocals of that glorious straight-six.

Priced from £65,830, with the manual option slightly dearer, the BMW M2 is at the pricier end of this premium performance bracket, which includes rivals such as the Mercedes AMG CLA 45 S or Mercedes AMG A 45 S, various iterations of the Porsche 718 Cayman, and the Audi RS3.

Larger, heavier and perhaps a hint less playful than its predecessor, the new BMW M2 nonetheless feels like a more accomplished car. It now combines the power and pace you’d expect of an M car with new-found ride composure, handling precision, dynamic versatility, technical sophistication and configurability.

Space in the front gives little cause for complaint. The electrically adjustable carbon fibre bucket seats on the car we drove allow you to sit snug and low behind the wheel.

However, getting into them is an ungainly exercise, and extricating yourself positively painful thanks to the hard, thin, near vertical ridge of the cushion side bolster, which threatens to cut your backside in half. 

Although the option of manual transmission in the UK is a good thing, right-hand-drive cars struggle to accommodate three pedals in the footwell without a considerable offset, which leaves the clutch on the centre-line of the driver’s seat.

Unfortunately, the cushion side bolsters exacerbate this offset. Additionally, the centre-line on the seat itself is occupied by an ungainly, ridged carbon fibre cod-piece which is not remotely comfortable.

The biggest problem with the rear seats is getting in and out. Once you’re installed, they’re comfortable enough, although there’s precious little legroom, and not much headroom for tall passengers.

Boot capacity is 390 litres; exactly the same as the rest of the BMW 2 Series range. And the rear seatbacks fold flat to extend the loadspace volume considerably.

Storage space within the cabin is somewhat limited. There are the usual cubby holes and door bins you’d expect, but anything of any size is going over your shoulder and on to the back seats.

We can’t fault the cabin for build quality, and it looks like a fully rigged M car in every key way, including the secondary control concept – M1 and M2 selector tabs on the steering wheel, digital instrumentation, satin chrome and carbon fibre trim, and even the three-colour M Power ambient lighting panels in the doors.

But the Star Trek Next Generation-reject M Power-coloured digital driver’s instruments shaped in homage to the brand’s kidney grille are, frankly, ugly, and no fun to look at or read.

In all, there’s no doubting the premium, but must it all look so unpleasant?

BMW’s Curved Display infotainment system dominates the dashboard. It’s made up of a 12.3-inch digital driver’s instrument screen and a 14.9-inch central control display.

There’s a head-up display, too, which is also graphically overwrought with a fat, go-faster striped panel to the extent that it’s both a source of information and a distraction.

On the plus side, the BMW M2 sports a rotary input multimedia system controller on the transmission tunnel to avoid the need for finger stabbing and greater distraction on the move. Unfortunately, though, all heating and ventilation controls are now part of the touchscreen.

The 14.9-inch screen benefits from the latest BMW software tech, which equates to super-fast responses, pin-sharp graphics and one of the better voice control systems around.

Top-level navigability is good, with customisable widget-style menus and user-set shortcuts as part of a quick reference menu for fast access to driver assistance functions and such. And navigation routing and mapping are excellent.

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are also fitted as standard to stream your music and take advantage of your maps apps. There is also a small raft of M-specific apps, such as a lap timer and even a tool to analyse your drifting capabilities.

BMW’s M2 range choices will confuse no one: one body style, two gearboxes and just six colours, of which only one – £1995-worth of Frozen Pure Grey – is a cost option.

Prices for a BMW M2 with an eight-speed automatic transmission start at £65,830. The six-speed manual iteration, which we’re lucky to get in the UK, starts from £67,030.

That may sound pretty steep when you consider that an Audi RS3 can be yours for as little as £56,590, a Porsche 718 Cayman S from £61,800 and a Mercedes AMG A 45 S from £63,285.

It wouldn’t, however, seem unreasonable to bung on another 10 grand for the options you just won’t be able to resist in any of these three cases. Moreover, in the quest for more power and prestige, you even may find yourself considering a £73,300 Porsche Cayman GTS 4.0, or even a Mercedes AMG CLA 45 S.

It’s not as if BMW’s options list won’t prove every bit as dear. The M Driver’s Pack, for example, will set you back £2305 to dial the speed limiter up to 180mph and give you a sniff of ‘M Immersive’ track-based training.

The M2 Comfort Pack, meanwhile, charges you £730 for a heated steering wheel and wireless phone charging, whilst the M Race Track Pack will set you back an eye-watering £9095 for a carbon fibre roof panel, and carbon fibre front seats and cabin trim.

As well as being the quickest variant, the eight-speed automatic BMW M2 pips the six-speed manual version for efficiency.

BMW says it averages 29.1mpg in the WLTP combined cycle and emits up to 220g/km of CO2, whereas the manual achieves a best of 28.2mpg and emits up to 228g/km of CO2. Both fall into the 37% benefit-in-kind band, but few will probably be taking a BMW M2 on as a company car.

Making BMW M2 ownership straightforward is the company’s Service Inclusive package. You pay a lump sum up front and the company will provide all of the required servicing up to your car’s fifth year or 62,000 miles, whichever comes first.

In keeping with the BMW M2’s more accessible nature, though, its fixed-price servicing is the least expensive of the BMW M variants.

Otherwise, the BMW M2 comes with a conventional three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty. If you plan on keeping it, though, we recommend opting for an extended warranty.

This is high-end engineering and any complicated problems could prove expensive to fix, so warranty extensions are well worth investing in.

The BMW M2 has adaptive dampers fitted as standard, which means, in Comfort drive mode, it’ll cosset in an option cost-free way no M car has ever done before.

Despite stiffer suspension and ultra-rigid body bracing, the car refuses to become unsettled on even the worst road surfaces. 

Being a relatively small car with a highly-tuned suspension set-up, the BMW M2 isn’t the most relaxing proposition for a day spent on the motorway.

But the ride actually always remains on the acceptable side of supple, and it’s tyre noise that may ultimately do your head in. Irritatingly, adaptive cruise control isn’t fitted as standard, and will cost you over £1000 as part of a driver assistance tech package.

If long-haul comfort is essential to your ownership experience, we recommend opting for the standard BMW seats, which are perfectly supportive, no bother to clamber in and out of, and don’t exacerbate the offset pedal issue when you’re driving the manual version.

When the going gets twisty, the BMW M2 really gets going. Dial in your favourite damper, steering, engine response, brake pressure and traction control settings via one of the M tabs on the steering wheel, plant your right foot, and the car is absolutely in its element.

This may be a bigger, heavier car than its predecessor, but it’s also more powerful, more planted and more mature. It still grips and goes tremendously well, but it now has more composure at speed; a more Gran Turismo feeling of effortless power and control as it inhales A-road corners with extraordinary pace and poise.

Bung it down a B-road, however, and you’ll discover it retains the old M car capacity to misbehave if you so desire.

The steering may lack a little in feel, but it wants nothing for precision, and you can place the car with consistent accuracy. There’s stacks of grip, and you can lean on the rear tyres to an almost improbable extent without disturbing the traction control electronics. Oh, and, the brakes are relentlessly prodigious.

However, scroll through the drive mode settings until you’ve disengaged those traction nannies, find the right environment, and a classic, oversteering M car is yours.

There’s just one engine, but what an engine. This is the 2993cc, twin-turbocharged straight-six petrol unit from the BMW M3 and BMW M4, but with some 50PS and 100Nm of torque less. Not that you’ll notice in this smaller, dartier car.

Building to a delicious snarl, the engine still delivers 460PS at 6250rpm, and 550Nm of torque between 2650 and 5870rpm.

Mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission with flappy paddle override, this equates to a 0-62mph dash in 4.1 seconds (4.3 in manual guise) and a maximum, limited speed of 155mph.

Opt for the M Driver’s Package and the top speed rises to 180mph, getting you to your prison cell quite a bit more quickly.

This is an engine that even sounds good at a slightly brisk, seamlessly smooth idle. The straight-six has the fabulous breadth of operating range and wonderful linearity of power delivery that aficionados of the BMW M3 and BMW M4 will recognise.

It is, happiest, though, pulling from over 3000rpm, by which time any sense of turbo lag has vanished, and it will spin on to over 7000rpm, building an intoxicating, addictive snarl quite unlike any you’ll hear from any other unit.

There’s now a ZF torque converter in place of the dual-clutch transmission of the old BMW M2, and you can dial the shift speed and abruptness up and down through three settings.

In the third of three it chomps through the gears with a clipped punctuation that perhaps isn’t for everyday driving. Its ultra-smooth in the first of three, and sufficiently slick and fast enough in the middle setting.

The BMW M2 has not undergone Euro NCAP safety testing, but the regular BMW 2 Series Coupe achieved four out of five stars in 2022.

It scored just over 80% for adult and child occupant protection, but a slightly disappointing 64% rating for safety assist systems.

As standard, the BMW M2 is equipped with a parking assistant with a rear-view camera and sensors front and rear, a speed limiter and non-adaptive cruise control.

The adaptive version – not available if you buy a manual car – which can adjust your speed to maintain position in traffic, comes as part of the £1100 Driving Assistant pack.

This adds extra assistance kit that uses cameras and radar to help prevent collisions, or mitigate the outcomes, and includes lane departure warning, front collision warning and rear collision prevention.

No information is available regarding the BMW M2's towing potential.

There’s only one version on the market at the moment, which is the standard BMW M2 Coupe.

Customers can pick from five colour choices, four different wheel designs, four upholstery options, red or blue brake callipers, and – of course – a six-speed manual or eight-speed automatic gearbox. Only one interior trim option is available, which is carbon fibre.

Standard equipment is extensive, as you’d hope given the cost of the BMW M2, with factory-fit features including a Harman/Kardon surround-sound audio system, heated electric front sports seats, a widescreen infotainment system and driver’s display, adaptive LED headlights, an active M Sport differential, cruise control, and a full-colour head-up display system.

There are some gently pricey upgrade packages. The first is the M2 Comfort Package, which adds features such as keyless entry, a heated steering wheel and a wireless charging tray in the front of the centre console.

The M Driver’s Pack bumps the BMW M2’s limited top speed of 155mph to 180mph, and affords owners some track day training time. An M Race Track Package is also available, which adds high-end features such as M carbon bucket seats, and the aforementioned M Driver’s Pack.

There’s also the option of the BMW Driving Assistant, a radar and camera-based driver assistance package, which includes lane departure warning, lane change warning, front collision warning, rear cross-traffic alert, rear collision prevention and a speed limit display.

Active Cruise Control, also known as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), is available as well; this package can only be specified on automatic BMW M2s due to technical requirements.

A host of BMW M Performance parts are also available. Upgrades include forged performance wheels, a titanium rear exhaust assembly and carbon-fibre exterior parts.