EVO Drives and Reviews the BMW M235i

Our favorite UK car magazine EVO had a chance to drive the new M235i at the track and on the road. But it’s particularly interesting for BMW 135i fans/owners because the man who reviewed it recently (Henry Catchpole) recently turned in his long-term 135i test car.
>The first obvious difference is that there’s less roll. On track, the 235i is noticeably flatter both into and through the corner. With 15 per cent stiffer springs and firmer bumps stops, this is to be expected, but the 235i feels lower and smaller too. Turn in too aggressively and your only reward will be the front tyres letting go and the nose running wide of the apex. But take a more considered approach, learn where the grip levels lie, and you find a beautifully balanced car that is very rewarding to string a lap together in.
>The newly recalibrated DSC will let you have much bigger slides, too, and when it does rein everything back it does so much more smoothly, so you feel much happier leaving it on. If you turn it all off then there is of course the potential for even more fun. With the standard rear axle set-up, the only help comes from something called Active Differential Brake, a sort of pseudo LSD that brakes a spinning driven wheel under acceleration. Although ABD doesn’t give you the satisfying control of a proper LSD, the M235i is still a huge amount of fun over the limit.
>As standard the M235i gets a fantastic six-speed manual with a short shift, and BMW’s optional eight-speed automatic is a particularly good one. The paddles are attached to the steering wheel and have a lovely curve so that you can hook the tips of your fingers onto them. The shifts are not as ruthless as a dual-clutch automated manual’s, but they are extremely good nonetheless and give you a real sense of connection when batting between gears. The short ratios also serve to make the most of the fantastic 3.0-litre straight-six with its single twin-scroll turbocharger. It might seem crazy having eight forward gears, but when you’re just listening to the revs and changing on instinct it feels incredibly easy to keep the engine permanently on the boil.
>The steering isn’t wriggling with feedback sadly (how many cars’ helms are these days?) but it is accurate and well weighted in Sport mode so that it gives you confidence to push on.
>…It’s obviously not a full M-car, but ‘mini M4’ allusions are inevitable and seem entirely valid given that both have a turbocharged straight-six under the bonnet. No doubt the M4 will feel like a step up in grip, grunt and drama when we drive it later this year, but we also know that it will be a chunk longer and wider, and there is something extremely appealing about this small, wieldy 2-series package. It makes me think that (especially with the optional LSD) it could be all the M performance you actually need.
Lots to read. Check it out at EVO.