MODERN CLASSIX
EVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER.’ ADVICE AS relevant in life as it is in literature, but just this once, we suggest you freely ignore it. Each of these cars drives exactly as it looks. There’s the brawny, muscular one. The precise, tactile one. And the quirky, slightly experimental one. Names are barely necessary in this company. But if each really was a book, you’d be sold as soon as you clocked it on the shelf.
‘Brawny and muscular’ is the BMW 1-series M Coupé, better known as the 1M. This was the car that promised a return, of sorts, to the ethos of the original M3. At the time of the 1M’s launch in 2011 the M3 was in its fourth generation and packed V8 power, but it was also further than ever from the light and compact car that began the lineage.
The reception for the 1M was mixed, much of it centring around the choice of engine: firstly, it was turbocharged, as only the dubious X6M had been in the M model range until then, and secondly, the 335bhp 3-litre in-line-six N54 unit that BMW chose was not a ‘true’ M engine. Were it not for the cover art – flared arches covering 74mm and 46mm wider front and rear track widths, quad tailpipes, skeletal motorsport wheels – people might not have been as inclined to discover the story within.
Precise and tactile’? That’s the Porsche Boxster Spyder, of 987 vintage. Much like today’s Spyder, the 987 was the open-topped equivalent of the most focused
