A four-seat sports coupé for just £40k… in 2025?! New BMW 2 Series expertly defends a dying segment

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a day ago

We've yet to sample the six-cylinder, which is a shame.
But… while straight sixes are inherently smoother, punchier and more balanced than four-bangers, and they sound good too – and all of this should matter in a BMW – the 230i's four-cylinder is smooth, torquey, powerful and sounds pretty good, if a bit muffled.
Boot it coming out of a T-junction and there's enough power to raise the traction control from its slumber and the 0-62mph scamper is over and done in less than six seconds, which is plenty, really, if you're not after a serious sports car.
In-gear acceleration is strong, there's no hugely notable drop-off of pace while you're doing legal speeds and the 295lb of torque is measured out neatly, although it does feel a bit like it's running out of puff by 6000rpm.
The shift paddles are also super quick to respond, even though they are small and feel plasticky.
Every 2 Series Coupé gets the excellent eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox, but you could easily be fooled into thinking it was a dual-clutch transmission, given the speed of the changes, the way it responds to the paddles and how it occasionally thumps through a less than smooth shift. What's more, the engine response shows no sign of any slip from the torque converter.
Like all modern BMWs, the 2 Series lets the driver configure various aspects of the way it drives. Eco Pro dulls all the responses, while Normal is, as the name suggests, fairly normal, except that the gearbox calibration can feel slightly too optimised for the WLTP cycle, coming at the detriment of refinement as it lugs the engine.
Sport mode makes it more responsive, without hanging on to gears for too long like it will when you knock the gearlever into its own Sport mode. Sport also makes the throttle response keener, dials up some synthetic engine sound, adds weight to the steering and makes the brakes touchier.
All of those aspects can be turned back down in Sport Individual, except for the grabby brakes. That's frustrating, because the gearbox is at its best in Sport and the synthetic engine noise actually adds to the experience, making the car sound neither like an in-line four nor a straight six, but somewhat like an old Ford V4 in a fruity tune.
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BMW devotees will be well used to the extra-glitzy materials and the technological glare of the firm's current interior design philosophy.
The days when the ambient quality and luxury of Munich's cabin treatments were deliberately understated are long gone. Some time ago, the firm decided it needed to take on both Audi and Mercedes in that respect, and it conjured driving environments of readily apparent richness and lavishness. Pretty soon after that, the G20-generation 3 Series got an interior full of boldly hexagonal chrome and high-tech, widescreen wizardry – and that's a treatment the 4 Series now inherits.
It's an interior in which it's very easy to make yourself comfortable over long distances. It feels expensively hewn and appointed and is broadly easy to interact with and to configure to your liking. The driving position is only marginally lower and more snug than that of a 3 Series. You wouldn't call it sports car low, but then, with ease of access and long-range visibility in mind, neither should it be. The control layout is excellent, with very generous adjustment of the steering column available. Slightly wide A-pillars impinge on forward visibility to an extent, but only as is broadly common among modern cars.
Instrumentation is all digital, with the rev counter and speedometer displayed around the lateral extremes of an octagonal binnacle screen. The display themes change with the selected driving mode, but few are as easily readable as they ought to be and none of them provides a simple pairing of circular dials that could be read so easily at a glance. In cars with BMW's optional head-up display, of course, you can never claim to be ill-informed of your road or engine speed, but on behalf of those who like to pare down and simplify what the car is telling you in order to make longer trips less tiring, BMW could still do better.
The 4 Series' rear seats are predictably tricky things in which to berth. You'll need to be under 6ft tall to find enough head room, although leg room is a little less meanly provided. Overall, though, the 4 Series' back-seat accommodation is reasonable enough for occasional use. The ability to fold the rear seatbacks, split 40/20/40, is a welcome boost to carrying flexibility, meanwhile, and boot space is good.
Slightly more noticeable than the exterior visual tweaks are the changes inside for 2024, where sports seats are now standard fitment, the steering wheel is flat-bottomed and the restyled air vents are now adjusted with neat, thimble-shaped knobs that are sensibly placed and nice to twiddle.
The 4 Series was only recently a recipient of a new twin-screen wraparound display that dominates the dashboard, which would be awful news for analogue apologists were the most important in-car controls not still housed in easy-access clusters of physical buttons in the centre console. The interface now runs the latest generation of BMW's iDrive platform, which is much the same as before – graphically appealing and agreeably responsive – only now with improved menu structures that aim to give you "the right information in the right place".
The results are not transformative: this remains a highly competent and functional system, but one that just requires a touch too much eye time on the move, with a dazzling array of small and vaguely illustrated icons on the home page and too much responsibility over the climate control and so on. Happily, the trademark rotary controller remains, and there's a new fixed row of widgets on the right-hand side that allow control over various functions without delving into sub-menus. Swings and roundabouts.
The inbuilt sat-nav also gets an optional augmented reality boost, with a new function that superimposes directional arrows, parking tips and the like over an animated livestream of your forward view. A neat party trick, but of limited use if you're of the Waze or Google Maps persuasion.
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No one really buys a BMW for the cabin ambience. Munich itself would probably concede that, on outright material substance in most executive classes, Mercedes continues to set the standard. Meanwhile, on business-smart style, Audi leads the way.
But while it's a comfortable, solid and wholly pleasant place in which to spend time, the BMW 4 Series' cockpit is entirely predictable and perhaps a missed opportunity to narrow either of those notional gaps.
What you'll find here is 95 percent stock 3 Series componentry. In a 3 Series coupé you might forgive that, but in a 4 Series – just as we reported of the 6 Series – you can't help feeling short-changed by the lack of differentiation.
M Sport-spec cars get a rather lovely, pleasingly compact M Sport steering wheel, for example, but that was easily the most special ingredient in the entire cabin. Which, for a £32k-plus luxury coupé, isn't saying much. One car we tested had black leather with black trim accents; there are more colourful treatments, but we're not sure any of them would be bright enough to excuse BMW totally, whether it has transgressed via laziness, pragmatism or simple lack of ambition.
BMW is nothing if not thorough, though. The control ergonomics are excellent, the instruments are clear and the iDrive menu is foolproof. The latter is made easier to use by a touchpad found on the top of the rotary selector, which you can use to trace alphanumerical inputs for the telephone and navigation systems.
The front seats are comfortable and supportive, only lacking for good lumbar support on our test car. The rear ones are accessible enough and offer decent levels of accommodation; you wouldn't choose to put a large passenger in one for long, but if you had to, he'd be more comfortable than in the back of an A5 and little less so than in a Mercedes E-Class coupé.
There are two trim levels to choose from - Sport and M Sport, while those wanting an M4 get a bespoke spec. The entry-level Sport trim equips the 4 Series with 18in alloy wheels, gloss black exterior trim, dual chrome exhausts, LED head, rear and fog lights and parking sensors as standard on the outside. Inside the 4 Series gets dual-zone climate control, heated front seats, a Dakota leather upholstery, interior ambient LED lighting and BMW's brilliant iDrive infotainment system complete with sat nav, DAB radio, Bluetooth and USB connectivity, BMW's online services and a 6.5in screen.
Upgrading to M Sport adds an aggressive bodykit, sports suspension and interior touches such as, door sills and an M Sport steering wheel, alongside BMW's Professional Media pack. Opt for the monstrous M4 then you have two core trims to choose from currently - standard and Competition Pack. The regular M4 gets 19in alloy wheels, active differential, adaptive suspension, quad-exhaust, an 8.8in iDrive display, cruise control, wireless charging dock and automatic lights and wipers as standard.
Opt for the competition pack to your M4 and you get 20in alloys, a loudspeaker system, a tweaked adaptive suspension set-up with specific springs, dampers and anti-roll bars and reconfigured active differential, driving modes and traction control. T he limited edition hardcore M4 GTS gets adaptive LED headlights, ceramic braking, a GTS coilover suspension, a leather and Alcantara upholstery, a M-division tuned dual-clutch gearbox and three point seat belts.
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