BMW M2 Vs 1M Coupe Vs E30 M3 Vs 2002 Turbo | Top Gear

Sixty miles later, I’m parking the M2 in my ever-evolving dream garage. It feels fast, handy, and eminently chuckable, just like an M car should

More by accident than design, TG.com also finds itself driving away from the airport late at night in an M2 fitted with the manual gearbox and various bits from BMW’s Performance Parts options list. The optimum spec, perhaps. Ours is white, with black carbon aero add-ons including a very trick looking front splitter, side blades similar to those fitted to Ferrari’s 458 Speciale, and a rear spoiler. But the star turn here is the M Performance exhaust, which is controlled via a Bluetooth connection and can take the car’s exhaust volume from audibly naughty to technically illegal on the road via a little cylindrical device that lives in the recess in the centre console. Push a button at the top to prime, and pin your lugholes back.

It certainly enlivens the various tunnels that stud the Malaga-to-Estepona motorway, although I’d hold off on one of the other options, the coil-over suspension that drops the ride height by close to an inch and offers 16 rebound and 12 compression settings. Turns out the regular M2 is plenty firm enough, to the extent that it’s finding bits of Spanish black-top to get jiggy with that even a worn-out hire car would sail serenely over.

Jigginess is a price worth paying, though. The M2 immediately feels like a car in which you can do very serious business indeed. The driving position is perfect, the wheel is the familiar fat-rimmed M job that some people grumble about but I personally love, and there’s Alcantara and stitching and a general, overwhelming sense of M-ness.

And it really goes. The engine is a 3.0-litre straight-six, dishing up close to 370bhp and 369 torques, single turbocharged rather than twin, as is the case with the M3 and M4. It also borrows M3 pistons and main bearings. Peak power is at 6500rpm, but the torque arrives in such a relentless wave that you just monster along in a junior supercar kind of way. Sixty miles later, I’m pretty much parking the M2 in my ever-evolving dream garage. It feels fast, handy, and eminently chuckable, just like an M car should.

The next morning brings a trio of potential nemesises (nemesi?), and some ludicrous weather. Fast and handy? The BMW 2002 wrote the book on that. Mind you, the Turbo is a rather different proposition. A mere 1672 were manufactured between 1973 and 1975, and as the first production car to use turbocharging – a technology still in its mewling, kicking infancy back then – it's fair to say the 2002 Turbo’s reputation precedes it (sideways and then backwards). Its KKK turbo and Kugelfischer injection are renowned for needing constant fettling, not to mention a sun-dial to measure the arrival of boost.