First Drive: The New BMW 1 Series M Coupe

Checklists can be quite helpful in life. They allow you to consolidate your thoughts. They keep things organized. And of course, they help you to prioritize.

Speaking of which, when it comes to cars, most people have a personal checklist. As far as automotive priorities go, the following criteria usually rate highly:

Rear-wheel-drive: check. Manual gearbox: check. Wide track: check. Short wheelbase: check. More than 300bhp: check.

Okay, the boxes are all ticked. That settles it, then – the BMW 1 Series M Coupe is the best M car ever made. Well, based on a checklist that may be the case, but delve a little further and you can tell that there’s a bit of cost sharing going on; the 1M is actually just a parts bin special.

The engine is from the Z4 sDrive35iS. The M Leather steering wheel with its M-Drive button is shared with the current M3 variants. The door mirrors are shared with the M3. The entire front and rear suspension design has been carried over from the M3 (apart from the front sub frame). The steering has been carried over unchanged from the E92 M3. The ‘M variable locking differential’ is shared with the current E92 M3. The braking system is the same as on the E92 M3. The 19” alloy wheels are shared with the current M3 ‘competition package’. And the gearbox is from BMW 5 Series.