From rev-happy past to electric future: BMW’s M hits 50

The Past

‘The past beats inside me like a second heart’ wrote John Banville. He was nearly right. My own heart is currently thumping like someone’s running 500 volts through it, but it’s beating in the past, not the other way around.

I have just gently crammed myself into the driver’s seat of a BMW M1 coupe. This, as far as BMW M fans are concerned, is Genesis (not the people who make nice sticky buns…). While the storied M-badge traces its roots back to 1972, hence the 50th anniversary, this wedge-shaped, shark-nosed coupe is, for many, where is all begins.

A twist of the key, and the 3.5-litre straight-six mounted just behind my spine fires grumpily to life. “I oiled up its plugs earlier this week, so it’s running a bit rich.” These are the words of Eugene McQuaid, the man who looks after the M1. He also looks after a lot of other cars, on behalf of Frank Keane.

Keane is a legend in the Irish motoring world — for three decades (plus change) he was Ireland’s BMW importer and distributor, and he still owns and runs two large BMW dealerships, on Dublin’s Naas Road, and in Blackrock. He’s also, as McQuaid describes him; “the ultimate petrolhead”. This M1, one of only 453 ever built (and 53 of those were ProCar racing versions) has been owned from new by Keane, and it’s the cornerstone of his astonishing car collection. It’s not priceless, but it may as well be by my person standards — it’s worth at least €500,000.

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It’s also left-hand drive, and has a dog-leg manual gearbox, which means that first is back and over towards your right hip, while second is forward and up, where first is in a ‘normal’ gearbox. Hence the elevated heart rate.

By modern standards, the M1 is not especially powerful – at 280hp, its power output is eclipsed these days by a run-of-the-mill BMW 330e saloon. By 1970s standards, though, that’s quite a lot and the M1 weighs only 1,300kg. So, with a grumbly engine, a confusing gearbox, and a tiny and mostly useless set of side mirrors, I nose out into traffic.

I needn’t have worried. The M1 is an utter pussycat. A quick burst of throttle has the straight-six’s throat cleared, and now we’re accelerating hard. The lumpy idle has converted, without apparent effort, into a rising howl and now I have to stop and think – right hand, not left; forward, to the right, and forward again – yup, that’s second. The growl returns momentarily to a grumble and then we’re off again, the howls searching for a second crescendo.

By the standards of other mid-engined 1970s cars, the M1 is utterly easy, a fact that Eugene confirms by mentioning that he once drove it all the way to Munich. “The only problem I found was that it gets really hot,” he tells me. “The cooling pipes from the front-mounted radiator run under the cockpit, so in a big traffic jam on the French-German border, it got really warm in here.” I can well believe it – even on this not especially hot may afternoon, the M1′s cabin is already heating up quite dramatically.

The unassisted steering will also get your sweat glands up and running at low speeds, but once you have a decent clip going, the M1 becomes light and fluid. And fun. That classic combo of low weight, plenty of easy-access power and torque, and that low, sharp nose for perfect forward visibility makes for a glorious combination.

No wonder the M1 made such a good racing car. Ian Beatty, operations and sporting director at Mondello Park, knows just how good. Beatty looks after the Birrane Collection, the hoard of glorious racing cars assembled by the late great Martin Birrane, owner of both Mondello Park racetrack and racing car constructor Lola. One of the stars of the collection is a BMW M1 ProCar, originally raced by the German Le Mans ace, Hans J. Stuck. Beatty was behind the wheel of the Birrane M1 in 2019, at the Goodwood Members Meeting, when the 40th anniversary of the ProCar series was celebrated.

“They’re a lot lighter and more powerful than the road-going M1, it has around 470hp,” Beatty tells me. “That run at Goodwood was one of the first times I’ve ever had a chance to properly stretch its legs. Mondello is quite a tight and technical circuit, but at Goodwood I could really open it up, get it into top gear. You’re always conscious of what you’re driving and how valuable it is [the Birrane M1 is insured for €2 million – impressive for a car BMW could hardly give away in the early eighties] but it’s a race car, and once you get it out there it’s really enjoyable. It’s deafening in there, the engine is so noisy, but it has fantastic balance. It’s a car you can really play with.”

If the M1 is Genesis then the E30 M3 is Peter Gabriel’s solo career — a thing that defined the 1980s.

Based on the sober-suited E30 3 Series saloon, the M3 was developed specifically as a racing car. While it looks like a regular 3 Series with a big rear spoiler, actually it’s close to bespoke. It gets flared wheelarches for wider suspension, and even the angle of the rear window is different, to better feed air to that spoiler.

Up front is arguably BMW M’s greatest creation. Forget the 4.4 turbo V8 currently in use in the M5 and M8, the 2.3-litre four-cylinder engine in the original M3 (distantly related to the 1.5-litre four-cylinder that BMW M developed into 1,500hp screamer for Formula One) develops a healthy 200hp, with nary a turbo nor hybrid system in sight.

The M3 is, effectively, a living legend. A car that dominated the racetracks of Europe, not to mention the occasional rally stage (Cork legend Billy Coleman once campaigned an M3 rally car) and it has been held up as a shining example of motoring perfection ever since. I’ve managed to never drive one. Until today.

They say never meet your heroes. Well they’re wrong. Meet them. Hug them. Hold them close and never let them go. As long as they’re an M3, at any rate – don’t try this with the cast of Derry Girls or anything.

As with the M1, you sit on the left, and the M3 also has the dog-leg five-speed manual gearbox. In spite of its status as a homologation special, it feels far more normal in here than it did in the M1. You sit in a comfortable, well-bolstered leather bucket seat, looking out over that classic angled BMW dashboard with its orange-lit dials. The slim, three-spoke steering wheel fits in your palms as if your hands were specifically evolved to hold it.

Legends rarely live up to themselves, but the M3 is a fabulous exception. True, its actual performance levels are eclipsed by even a fairly humble modern hot-hatch, but the M3 was never, ever about straight-line speed (it left that to its sledgehammer rival, the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth). No, the M3 is about delicacy, about the uncorrupted flow of information from the road, via the tyres, steering rack, and chassis to your synapses. Your fingertips and buttocks become effectively part of the car, the M3 pivoting around you with playful precision. Even though I’m being incredibly careful, driving yet another valuable member of the Keane collection, the M3 goads you onwards, encouraging you to take liberties and have some fun. You’re not actually going all that fast, but you’re loving every millimetre of the journey.

The Present

Just down the road is Mondello Park, now as ever Ireland’s only proper racetrack. Sitting, gurgling gently, in the pitlane is a new BMW M3. The direct successor to the light, delicate, agile little four-cylinder M3 I’ve just driven, the current M3 is packing a turbocharged six-cylinder engine developing 510hp. The M3 is controversial, as it has succumbed to BMW’s current war on elegant styling, and is sporting a pair of nostrils so massive that even Jimmy Durante would think they were going a bit far.

Still, as I nose (no pun intended …) out onto the track, I can’t see them, and the current M3 is capable of a virtuoso performance. With that engine bellowing hard (it’s a deeper, bass-ier sound than the M1′s high-alto) the M3 can rip to 100km/h in just 3.9 secs — almost four seconds quicker than its E30 antecedent. It’s also a luxury saloon, now. The original E30 was too, really, but it was a plainer, simpler sort of luxury. The current M3 is as stuffed with screens, buttons, and shiny carbon-fibre trim as you would expect of a car costing €139,455 …

Fast? Unquestionably. Amazing carbon-ceramic brakes too, which have me shedding too much speed ahead of Mondello’s first tight hairpin corner, meaning I actually have to accelerate up to the apex. It’s certainly fun, but it’s a very, very different car to its predecessor. The current M3 is more akin to a cruise missile than a homologation special. The steering is brilliant, the accuracy with which you can corner it amazing, and the sheer speed is thrilling, but it’s too much for the public road to be honest. That original E30? You can exploit that, prod at its limits, enjoy it. The current M3, in spite of its relatively soft suspension, needs a racetrack to show you what it can do.

The Future

There’s an inescapably good feeling to driving a car past a petrol station sign reading €1.99 per litre, and knowing that you don’t have to buy any of it. The BMW i4 is the fully electric version of the current 4 Series Gran Coupe (a sleeker 3 Series saloon, if you like) and it’s packing an 80.7kWh (net) battery, plus a pair of electric motors that give it a whopping 544hp, and a claimed range of 511km on the WLTP cycle.

Actually that’s more like 400km in real-world conditions, if you’re using any motorways in your journey, and certainly if you want the air conditioning on. It’s a cocooning car, the M50 (albeit an unfortunately-named one for anyone with AA Roadwatch PTSD). You roll along in effortless silence, the loudest sound in the cabin being the ‘clunk’ made by my sunglasses sliding around in the centre console.

544hp is serious power, though. And a 3.9 sec 0-100km/h time is a match for the mighty M3. Yet the i4 M50 is not, strictly speaking, a proper M-car. It’s an M-Performance model. Think of it a M’s junior school, where you’ll find models such as the M340i, M240i, and M550i. Not quite as fast or as powerful as an M3, M2, or M5, but still pretty damned quick. Perhaps better choices in real-world terms these days?

Well, possibly. Sink your right foot and the i4 M50 bolts forward with electric venom, but that sense of acceleration does start to wane once you’re above 100km/h. Where the M3 will keep accelerating, then keep accelerating, and then keep shoving just a little bit more until your only option is really to scream and try to scramble into the back seat, the M50 backs itself off to preserve its battery.

It’s also not quite slick enough through the corners to really qualify for proper M-status. It’s accurate and sure-footed, unquestionably, but the 2.2-tonne weight cramps your style a touch.

So can an electric car ever, really, truly be a proper M-car? It’s debatable. This, after all, is a brand and a badge built on two pillars – motorsport success and howling straight-six engines. There is hope, though. The i4 is certainly a brilliant car (albeit possibly better in standard, still brisk, form) and if it’s not quite deserving of full M-ness yet, it surely can’t be long until BMW’s Garching-based wizards come up with a battery-powered car that truly evokes the spirit of that original M3.

Eugene McQuaid, the man who has more seat time in M-cars than most, is also hopeful. “We were discussing this just the other day. We think it might be time to add an electric car to the collection …”