BMW M2

HAVE I MADE A HUGE MISTAKE? SHOULD I DEACTIVATE ALL MY SOCIAL media profiles, claim I was hacked and enter a witness protection scheme? Feels like it. We asked BMW if we could replace our retiring i4 saloon with the baby M car. The M2. The last manual M car. And guess what? We've gone for the automatic.

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HELLO £65,830 OTR £70,295 as tested £803 pcm

WHY IT'S HERE BMW says it's easier to live with, but is that what we want from an M2?

DRIVER Ollie Kew

Yes, we've taken the only stick shift M car you can buy in the UK and snipped £1,200 off the enthusiast baiting price by selecting the standard fit eight-speed flappy paddle auto instead of the optional manual. Sacrilege? Madness? Heresy? Allow me to explain myself. First off, whether you approve of it or not, most M2s will be autos. The DCT outsold the manual in the old M2 despite being £1,500 pricier, and BMW's data brain says (outside of the US) only one in 10 of this generation will go manual. So this is the more relevant car, to more of you.

But I also suspect it's just better. Knowing the automatic is more popular, easier to pull better economy and CO₂ out of, and simpler to integrate modern conveniences like adaptive cruise control and autoparking into, I suspect it's had more development time lavished upon it.