How’s this for a change of recent pace? BMW may release a car next year available only with a manual transmission.
Just how pure of a purist’s car the 2016 BMW M2 might be the real question when it’s released next year, possibly at January’s Detroit Auto Show, according to a report from Auto Express. The magazine cites a high-up M official who indicated the M2 would be offered with a manual transmission only in order to sufficiently distance itself from the M3 and M4.
BMW has made ordering a manual transmission in any of its cars much more difficult in recent years, pretty much limiting it to a special order option on rear-wheel drive vehicles. And the U.S. is pretty much the only market now demanding row-it-yourself versions of the M3, M4 and M5.
It’s pretty clear that the M2 will be cast in a similar vein as the old 1-Series M Coupe, a small coupe with tons of power (somewhere north of 350 horses from a turbo’d 3.0-liter six) that makes few concessions to comfort and doesn’t brag about its technology like the plusher M3 now does. In other words, it’s what you’ll soon idolize if you used to idolize the M3 a decade or so ago. Stay tuned.
By Zac Estrada
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