Very excited! My wife decided she is good with a new BMW M2 as a replacement for her current car.

I introduced her to the BMW thing a long time ago when we bought her a used E36 325i convertible and I have only myself to blame for her not settling for less since then. While that has cost me money over the years it's also been an overall fun adventure. Her current car has probably been the least interesting of the bunch, it's a 335i xdrive sedan. It's probably the best car ever to drive in the rain and it has plenty of power, but in general it's more of a high speed cruiser and not that interesting, the automatic trans doesn't help.

In order, over the last twenty years she has had the aforementioned convertible, an E46 330i ZHP sedan (wonderful car, I wish we kept it) and then the current one. She definitely uses them for a while. We're at 110k on the dial on this one. They have all been used, this will be her first new car.

At first we were put off by the looks of the new M2, but for some reason it just started looking better as time went by and now we both really think it's fantastic.

She chose the Vandevoort Blue just like the car tested by GRM, but with black wheels and tan interior. She wanted the 8 speed ZF transmission. I've heard mixed things about the manual so I'm not unhappy about that. I put in the order with our local dealer, hopefully we get it in a few months. I never thought I would be happy opting out of a manual BMW, but the C8 Corvette's dual clutch has really made me a believer in the new automatics. I think I had all the manual transmission I will ever need owning the C6 Z06.

Sounds like you've owned the best 3 gens of 3 series (besides e30), how do they compare? Which is your favorite? I'd love to get an e36 after college, but is the e46 much better? The e90 felt pretty big.

While I don't find the M2 attractive, it's hard to argue with its capabilities. I have to imagine she is going to love it!

Evanuel9 said:

Sounds like you've owned the best 3 gens of 3 series (besides e30), how do they compare? Which is your favorite? I'd love to get an e36 after college, but is the e46 much better? The e90 felt pretty big.

Those are just the ones my wife had. I've also had an E21 320i and an E36 328i sedan.

I have a soft spot for the E36 M3 and I think nice ones will be collectible in the future as people just trash the heck out of them. It's a nice chassis with great handling and that mechanical LSD out back.

I don't think you can go too wrong getting any of those older BMW 3 series prior to the E90 as they are all easy to work on and generally cheap to fix. The one possible failure point that can cost which you will get told about is the rear subframe mounts cracking, but as long as you rule that out most everything is cake to deal with.  I think the E46 is a more refined as a car than the E36 and definitely more than the E30 which feels very barebones. It really depends on what you are looking for though, barebones can be appealing to a lot of people, you definitely feel less insulated from the road in an E30, but that can be tiring if it's your daily and they are really old at this point.

I think if you're going to get one, get one with an inline six and enjoy how those motors rev. It's such a smooth climb through the rev range.

Once you get to the E90 you start having to deal with a lot more computer stuff and overall complexity as they get into turbocharging and it becomes more tedious and expensive to maintain them.

Probably the most fun would be a manual E36 M3 or a manual E46 M3, but a 330 E46 wouldn't be bad either. It's strange to think the newest E46 is almost 20 years old now.

The M2 does tick a lot of boxes: comfortable, roomy and really fast.

Congrats. 

And, just saying, BimmerWorld currently has BMW wheels on sale. :) 

We picked it up!

We're still on the 1200 mile break-in period where you keep it under 4k RPM for the most part then we get the oil changed and can go for broke and yet, even babying this car I can tell this thing is fast as hell.

We got the auto because it's faster and damned if this transmission isn't amazing.

I have a C8 Corvette Z51 and this BMW M2 is still incredibly impressive in terms of the amount of power and how smooth it delivers that power. I've only been driving it around in the normal mode and not in the "M" modes so that the transmission shifts early and yet giving it 50% throttle gets me to highly illegal speeds extremely quickly.

I'll get some pics of the interior. It's a nice place to be.

I think my one complaint is that the screen is so gigantic that it makes using Apple Carplay a bit awkward at times if you want to actually interact with the touch screen.

In reply to Harvey :

Look through the manual, I bet it says something similar to my '23 BRZ. 

"Keep it below 4k RPM unless there is an emergency."

If everything is up to temp it's not going to hurt anything. It doesn't take 1200 miles to break-in a modern engine. 

Though I'm happy for the OP, it always drives me nuts to see car designs that are seemingly handled 95% by Person A, then Person B is left to do the last 5%. I like the overall shape of the body, all curves and more or less flowing lines... and then there's Person B's input on the lower intercooler(?) inlets. Seriously, square/rectangular duct inlets on an otherwise flowing body? For shame.

z31maniac said:

In reply to Harvey :

Look through the manual, I bet it says something similar to my '23 BRZ. 

"Keep it below 4k RPM unless there is an emergency."

If everything is up to temp it's not going to hurt anything. It doesn't take 1200 miles to break-in a modern engine. 

Well, I would normally agree, except literally the first oil change is scheduled and comes up in the car's computer as 1200 miles where they switch the break in oil for the normal stuff. I'm a little paranoid as I'm almost $70k into this one and don't want to have any warranty issues.

I would not be surprised if the can go snooping around in the computers and see if you have exceeded the 4K and could void warranty's or at least raise questions. 

dean1484 said:

I would not be surprised if the can go snooping around in the computers and see if you have exceeded the 4K and could void warranty's or at least raise questions. 

They should have limited it like Chevrolet did with the C8 Corvette if they wanted to ensure that. The first 500 miles of driving the C8 it limits the torque output of the motor. Then at 500 miles everything kicks in. It's such a contrast after driving it 500 miles in the break in mode.

As it stands with the BMW it was just a recommendation to keep it under 4k RPM for the first 1200 miles not that we couldn't go over it. It's not hard to stick to 4k RPM with the car having as much power as it does. We took a trip to Cape Cod in the car last week so we're at 1200 miles now and it's getting the oil change tomorrow and after that we can go nuts with it.