
The 2025 BMW M3 Competition Is a German GT-R: Video Review
The
E46 BMW M3
has one of the tallest statures in all of automotive history. It's the one that every M3 is judged against, save for the
E30
, and is almost universally beloved. For the average BMW fan, there isn't an M3 that can quite match the original magic of that car. I think that the newest facelift for 2025 (LCI, to BMW nerds) is finally that M3.
For our newest YouTube video, I got to drive the latest M3. And I found myself pleasantly surprised. I would hear arguments for more interesting or more exciting M3s, but the G80 generation is one of the most complete since the E46–And I think it finally hits the chord of excitement. Odd, because I was one of many journalists who beat the ugly drum on the buck-tooth'd G80. I almost hate that the car has proven me wrong, but the earliest variants of the car were OK at best.
It's a matter of technology. This is the first all-wheel-drive generation of M3, the latest refinement of a wide array of integrated chassis systems like adaptive dampers, brake vectoring, and advanced traction control. It is so technologically leveraged that tuning the systems is as important as tuning spring rates and sway bars. Finally, after some teething years, the 2025 G80 is something approaching M3 perfection. Find out why by watching our video.
More on the M3
We Drove Three of the Best BMW M3s Ever. One Stood Out
The Next BMW M3 Will Have a 'New Type' of Gas Engine
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While Volvo claims a peak of 250 kW, we saw power top out at 193 kW in our charging test that added 94 miles of range in 15 minutes. The Mercedes gained 126 miles and the BMW 122 in the same time. A Different Kind of Luxury In the Scandinavian tradition, the EX90 spoils occupants without being flashy. You don't buy it to inform your neighbors and coworkers that you've arrived. You buy it to tickle your eardrums with the $3,200 25-speaker Dolby Atmos–enabled Bowers & Wilkens audio system or to treat your lower back to those therapeutic seats. The only hint of ritzy opulence comes from the warm, white glow that shines through the sustainably harvested wood trim at night, a tasteful counterpoint to the ribbons of carnival lights used by the luxury-car establishment. If it helps to justify the near-six-figure price tag, you can rationalize the EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance as a pragmatic family vehicle, too. 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How Much Tech Is Too Much Tech? All that leaves us with one thing left to discuss: the software. To understand why the EX90 is the way it is, you first need a basic understanding of the central computing platform at the core of Volvo's Scalable Product Architecture 2 (SPA2). Rather than the old piecemeal approach where every widget in the car had its own computer, the bulk of the EX90's code runs on just two Nvidia chips and a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The same idea has allowed Tesla and Rivian to develop innovative new features, launch powerful and genuinely useful phone apps, and deliver over-the-air updates for any system in the vehicle. Volvo is chasing after those frontrunners, and the EX90 puts the company way out ahead of most legacy automakers in this regard. For buyers and shoppers, this change shows up as a pervasive Teslafication of how you interact with the vehicle. All the EX90's secondary controls save for the volume knob and audio power button have been digitized in the vertical 14.5-inch touchscreen. To activate adaptive cruise control or the lane-centering Pilot Assist system, you'll first have to retrain your neurons that grabbing the gear selector at 70 mph is a totally normal thing to do. The EX90 unlocks and flips out its door handles as you approach with the buttonless fob (or your phone loaded with a digital key) in your pocket, and the ignition powers up only when you shift into drive (you can actually get the car moving a fraction of a second before the power steering assist kicks in). Whether these are good or bad developments depends on your relationship with technology and your outlook on change—although surely we can all agree that giving the driver just two switches and a fussy capacitive button to control four windows is patently dumb. Not up for debate is the fact that the new infotainment system vaults Volvo from the digital stone age into the modern era. Volvo's current gas models (and the EVs based on them) are dated by tiny screens with grainy resolution and a clumsy interface at least five years past its expiration. The EX90's infotainment, built on Android Automotive OS, is exactly the reboot Volvo needs. The tiled home screen is dominated by Google Maps plus widgets for audio and a paired phone and two rows of controls along the bottom of the screen. The layout and logic feel like a bridge between the old way of doing things and Tesla's approach, which comes with a steepish learning curve. Download a few apps like Spotify, Waze, and PlugShare, and the EX90's native infotainment system almost makes the included wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto redundant, if only an automaker could find a solution for text messaging. The Work That's Left Unfinished It's one thing for a startup to reinvent how cars are wired from a clean sheet of paper and another thing entirely for a 98-year-old company to reimagine the way things have been done for decades. Reorganizing teams, bringing in fresh talent, creating new policies and processes, and throwing out all that time-tested software isn't easy, and in many legacy automakers it might cause the whole house of cards to collapse. The good news is Volvo appears to have exterminated most of the bugs from the system. Aside from one drive where the center screen failed to boot, our two weeks with the EX90 were happily error-free. You get a sense, though, that Volvo left some work unfinished to get the EX90 out the door even after it delayed the launch more than six months. Or maybe Volvo's evolving minimalist sensibilities have convinced the engineers that buyers want less control. The following distance of the adaptive cruise control has one setting that leaves a gap large enough to invite semis into your lane. Setting up a driver profile and tying it to your key ensures the seats are exactly where you want them before you sit down, but the safety systems revert to their high-anxiety default before every drive. I lost count of how many times the driver distraction alert beeped at me as I drove through my neighborhood while pecking at the screen to reset everything to my liking. The unseemly wart on the EX90's forehead also does nothing for the driver. The lidar sensor inside hoovers up data and beams it back to the mothership for now. Volvo says a software update coming later this year will activate the sensor so that the driver assistance systems can see further ahead, but even then, Pilot Assist won't allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel. GM's Super Cruise (a MotorTrend Best Tech winner) does more without sullying the design team's work. That hits especially hard, since Volvo's mastery of proportion, surfacing, and detail is on full display with the EX90. Don't Let the Tech Push Your Buttons Evaluate it as a car rather than a computer, and the 2025 Volvo EX90 Twin Motor Performance is brilliant. It delivers the cosseting luxury, rejuvenating comfort, and sure-footed dynamics we want in a flagship driving experience. It's also refreshing that, after more than a decade of lagging the rest of the industry, Volvo finally has in-car tech worthy of a luxury brand. At the same time, we can empathize with the buyers who don't want to relearn the basics of operating a car. Whether Volvo has pushed the techy minimalism too far is a question for each individual buyer to answer. But it'd be a shame to ignore a car this good—and seats this spectacular—over a few buttons you'd soon learn to live without.