This is going to sound like a classic “bad thing is really good” take, but listen to me: I think the big, ugly nostrils of the BMW M3 and M4 are good, and I’m tired of pretending they aren’t. That is my opinion since I saw the posts of the mole rat. It is my opinion now.
Everyone is always complaining about how cars are grouped into focus and legislated to death and no one else is at risk and there is no independent executive executing their vision. But as soon as someone gets close to the line, everyone sobs and grabs their pearls. “What did you do with the M3 !?”
I didn’t find the David E. Davis story about the BMW 2002 until I was an adult, and I had no interest in the M1, which came and went before my time. But for much of my life, BMWs were on a separate plane of existence – untouchable legal. Cooler than Porsche and Ferrari because they weren’t making sports cars, they were making hot rod sedans that could run over sports cars.
I’ll never forget to look at the cooling fans tucked behind an E36 M3 bumper in the parking lot of our local mall, then spot an M3 Lightweight on Front Street. I will never forget to sit on Alex Roy’s M5 and I heard him say it was the last big BMW that we would see. I will never forget to read Entrance of Jonny Lieberman’s M Coupe in Jalopnik’s fantasy garage. I am selling a Laguna Seca Blue E46 in the parking lot of restaurant where I worked at the Faculty. All these unpretentious cars, tuned and shaggy to offer great speed for those who know enough to buy one. The underdog, the q-ship, the wolf in the sum of the sheep’s parts.
In 2021, BMW is not an unlucky underdog. Depending on the year, BMW is the leader, or the second largest seller of luxury cars in the world. It builds big, expensive, high-tech cars and crossovers, and sells them a lot, presumably with a good margin. At some point, BMW had to stop making the types of cars that formed the outlines of its mythology. And stopped it.
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I just didn’t know what to do after that.
The consensus among BMW fans, enthusiasts and the media seems to be that BMW itself has been trying to figure out what to do in the past decade. Was there a deviation from the i8 / i3, a front transmission hatch with a cool roundel on the C pillar? I have no idea if these cars are still being manufactured. There were some powerful, but forgettable M cars. (People who know that the new M2 CS is great.)
I admit that I – a person who has never had a used BMW – have already been furious with BMW for “losing my way”. Some of the most cruel reviews I have ever written were criticisms of BMWs of the time. I’m sure at one point I would have said that BMW just needed to recapture the magic of the E39 or E46, or whatever. As German executives liked to say the last time I saw one in real life: “It is not possible”. If you are counting the money, I imagine it is not even desirable.
BMW cannot fully break free, the M3 still needs to be a sports sedan. So it looks like you either go out in a new direction or are continually dragged back into conversations about how the cars you’re building today are not as good or as engaging or as beautiful as the cars you can’t want to do anymore.
It is clear to me, looking at this car, that BMW wants to take a break. There is more evidence in a totally mortifying and tempting social media effort and more so in that video where cars are mean to each other. Someone at BMW made a choice.
The much-maligned Concept 4 of 2019 was the first time in a long time that I had the feeling that BMW was going in one direction. It was a pause. The design looked familiar, but only tangentially related to the BMWs of the past, more of a reference than a reverence. It was also one of perhaps three show cars that I saw in the last 10 years and that I remember.
Regular series 3 and 4 come close to fulfilling the Concept 4 promise. M cars get there. They are wicked, avant-garde, shocking and kind of ugly. At least visually, they are a firm rejection of much of BMW’s golden age ethos. The people who worked on E39 may recognize them, but they themselves may not have conceived them.
Many cars now look vaguely like BMW. The M3 and M4 look like BMWs from another, more frightening dimension, where people use drugs that come in a bottle and glow blue. It’s good, it’s exciting, it makes other sedans look old-fashioned instantly. BMW got shit because the projects went where others were not ready – or not equipped – to go, and they were justified. I think they will also be here. Remember how angry people were at Bangle cars? They may have seemed like another opportunity at the time, but now they are only part of the BMW myth.
I am still vaguely aware of the cars that BMW currently sells. I even lost the M cars afterwards, I think the E92s. I didn’t drive the new M3 / M4 and I didn’t love the last one. So, I’m not really equipped to say if it’s good. But when it comes to style, this is a game changer for BMW. This is something different, an expression of a new ethos. You may not know it now, you may hate it, but it is what you have been asking for.