BMW M240i xDrive Coupé
Price: R1 063 662 0–100 km/h: 4,58 sec Top speed: 250 km/h Power: 285 kW Torque: 500 N.m CAR fuel index: 9,6 L/100 km CO2 : 185 g/km
As far as milestones go, 2022 is unquestionably a landmark year for BMW’s M division.
That said, evolution rendered its most recent decade precarious. As the Bavarian skunkworks-turned-marketing arm celebrates its golden anniversary of shrieking straight-sixes shredding millions of rear tyres, a perilous future awaits fossil-fuelled performance, and not only for BMW.
All German premium brands are grappling with the existential discomfort of their superlatively efficient EV offerings outrunning the spawn of the very departments whose reason for being was once the pursuit of speed.
While the social and political pressure to produce cleaner cars ratchets up by the day, how much longer can competing technologies be expected to occupy the same showroom floor?
However, not all co-existences need be unviable. BMW’s newly launched 2 Series is currently topped by the M240i, a model so carefully crafted as a seat-warmer for the hotter – and imminent – M2 that it runs the risk of being labelled as
