Sampling BMW’s greatest hits shows what’s missing from its modern cars
Enlarge / Orange is Ars' primary color, but it's just a coincidence that we love this 2013 M3 Lime Rock Park car so much. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Jonathan Gitlin)
BMW provided flights from DC to San Francisco and back, plus five nights in a hotel, so we could attend Monterey Car Week. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
SAN FRANCISCO-This year, BMW invited Ars to Monterey Car Week, a "Comic-Con meets the Oscars" event for the automotive world. Unlike in 2019, when VW let us drive its electric ID Buggy, the Bavarian automaker didn't have a new electric concept to show us. Rather, the company has been celebrating 50 years of its performance sub-brand M, so it brought a handful of M's past hits out to California to be driven.
Also, like most other car companies, BMW is transforming into an electric vehicle maker. Motors can obviously be electric, so the Bavarian Motor Works doesn't even need to change its name. But over the years, the company's gasoline engines have pushed the envelope, and few other companies-Ferrari, perhaps?-can claim to have built as many different acclaimed powerplants. So its electric powertrains have a lot to live up to.
The engineers at M have started working their craft on BMW's latest generation of EVs. The i4 M50 four-door fastback and iX M60 are both more than quick enough to embarrass any full-fat (gas-powered) M car built before 2010, at least up to 125 mph (200 km/h). Tellingly, though, neither of those two rapid EVs are badged as a full M car, and a conversation earlier this year with the head of M, Frank van Meel, revealed that he thinks M has some work to do before we get an M3 or M4 that runs on batteries alone.