Report: 2016 BMW M2 to Get 365 Horsepower

By Alexander Stoklosa – Car and Driver

BMW’s hot new M2, the follow-up to the much-loved but short-lived 1-series M coupe, is coming soon. We’ve seen prototypes testing in the wild, ascertained it will have OLED taillights, and gone ahead and rendered what we think it will look like. All of this is fun, but it brings our butts no closer to the driver’s seat. At least our latest nugget of 2016 M2 information is spicy, if a bit disappointing; a Bimmerpost contributor revealed what’s claimed to be final power figures for the M2 to the 2Addicts.com forum—and it’s lower than we expected.

According to the forum post, the 2016 M2 will arrive with a version of BMW’s N55 twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six pushing out 365 horsepower and 343 lb-ft of torque. That’s quite a bit less than the “near-400 horsepower” we had expected—and not that much stronger than the M235i‘s 320 horsepower and 330 lb-ft of torque. That may actually be okay, however: 365 horses is 60 ponies shy of the larger BMW M3/M4’s 425-hp rating, and given how overpowered those M products can feel, it’d be nice to see the M2 cut a more classic, balanced power/handling mix that favors fun over outright, objective-measurements dominance. The Bimmerpost forum blaster also mentions that BMW will offer just four colors at the M2’s launch, following a similar strategy to the 1-series M coupe. Okay, so can we finally drive this thing already?