If any automaker’s caught flak on the internet for its own questionable decisions lately, it’s BMW. From bizarre styling to some excessively heavy products, there are plenty of reasons for enthusiasts to clown on the Bavarian brand, and here’s a new one. The 2025 BMW M235 sees the adoption of a new badge convention, and the culture has some feelings about it.
One notable difference is that there’s no more “i” for fuel injection as that letter’s now reserved for electric models. After all, every BMW with a combustion engine is fuel-injected now anyway. However, deletion of that letter isn’t what’s getting people in a puff this time, nor is the M prefix alone doing all the lifting in this instance of outrage.
Instead, BMW’s put the “35” bit of M235 in what can almost be described as subscript, and that’s rattled the cages of some enthusiast customers that BMW really shouldn’t be upsetting. Keep in mind, the M235 looks like a regular compact sedan and is based on a front-wheel-drive platform usually found under Minis. Not the most M thing out there, right?
Over on the populous BMW enthusiast forum Bimmerpost, things aren’t going well for the new M235, with specific mention of the badge. As one commenter who claims to own an M2 CS, one of the best modern M cars, wrote:
Now I skimmed the above in 10 secs, for the record…but screams to me as further dilution of the dedicated M brand…most telling from the rear end with the quad tips / big M2(small35)…soon enough, maybe we’ll make an M2 SUV as well and a 4 door 1 series! Really loved this brand…but with every new model release, that love is fading. Now, the real question – will my love affair with the E46 / E9X / F87 be impacted by the direction the brand is heading…a few years ago, I thought it didn’t matter…but that’s changing…
Yeah, it’s not so great when people who seem to buy actual halo products are putting a product on blast like this. Oh, and there’s a whole lot more where that came from.
Well, that’s a bunch of people with full-fat M cars in their signatures and bios and avatars putting the new M235 Gran Coupe’s badging on blast, and more importantly, they’re people with recent examples of those cars. If I were a brand, I wouldn’t want to upset those sorts of customers. Oh, and the distaste for this new badging convention doesn’t just stop at one forum.
On a post specifically about the badging in the private Facebook group Anti-BMW BMW Club, one commenter let the following rip:
Just when I thought the new 2 series couldn’t get any worse aesthetically. BMW is really going for every bad decision they can make.
The vitriol’s spilling over into real life, too. As a friend of David Tracy summed up the M235 Gran Coupe:
It’s an enormous poser. And BMW is pushing the posing. To make the 35 smaller font and essentially have an M2 badge on it is dismissing the meaning of the M badge even more than M Sport and M SUVs. Calling it an M235 was bad enough. There was a real M235i. I raced one
So, how did we get here? About a decade ago, BMW rolled out the first of what many enthusiasts call M-Lite models by replacing the 135i coupe with the M235i coupe. Yep, to cash in on the appeal of the M brand, BMW slapped M Sport goodies on a selection of higher-output not-full-M cars, slapped the M badge in front of three-digit names, and proceeded to collect checks. It was still controversial back then, but at least the initial approach had some level of exclusivity to it. At the time, few predicted that the M2 would happen, and with the 2 Series coupe being the smallest rear-wheel-drive BMW sold in America, the M-Lite was a neat consolation prize.
However, over the past decade, the M-Lite branding has expanded to just about every model in BMW’s lineup. It’s weird to see a motorsport badge on a giant X7 SUV, or an electric 5 Series that’s not track-focused in the slightest, but it’s not as weird as seeing this new badge configuration.
By badging the 35 bit of the M235 in differing font sizes, BMW appears to be trying to tie this entry-level sedan in with an actual performance car that already exists. See, there is an actual BMW M2, and it’s a 453-horsepower rear-wheel-drive sports coupe with an available manual transmission, a limited-slip differential, beefy brakes, stiff suspension, and all the sort of serious hardware you’d expect from an M car. It’s about as far away from a stretched Mini sedan in Dodge Dart-aping bodywork as you can get, and if anything, minimizing the engine description numbers on the M235’s badge and seemingly trying to lump this sedan in with the M2 coupe is more likely to hurt the M brand than help the sales of this particular car. Add in the perspective that this badging makes it seem that being a BMW alone wouldn’t make the M235 sporty enough, and that ought to worry important people in Munich.
BMW’s identity for most of the past 50-plus years has been as a maker of performance luxury cars. Even many of the slower ones like the E30 318i still drew acclaim for the way they drove, and there was this sense of authenticity that permeated the lineup. No matter whether you bought a 3 Series or a 7 Series, it would still drive like a BMW. That was the defining characteristic, the thing that made BMW a success story, partly because authenticity is cool. Even yuppies knew that, and in their cosmopolitan greed-is-good pursuit of the finer things in life, they helped elevate cars like the E30 3 Series from curious foreign automobiles to new status symbols.
Zoom in on 2024, and the current BMW lineup is known more for controversial styling than providing an outstanding driving experience. Well, controversial styling combined with heavy performance cars and a focus on gadgets. Many long-time BMW enthusiasts aren’t fans of this current direction, but that doesn’t matter because BMW’s market share is still rising. Last year was BMW’s best-ever sales year in America, and at the end of the day, that’s what keeps the lights on.
However, it might not necessarily keep the lights on this brightly forever. See, mainstream luxury brands need people to buy and covet their high-end halo cars because those actions reinforce status. Devaluing the M badge in turn devalues the BMW badge, and if the customers that make a brand desirable start to leave, well, you kind of end up with Cadillac circa 1998.
As it stands, BMW isn’t the same sort of enthusiast brand it once was. The only constant is change, and sometimes your old favorites move on from catering to your needs. The badging on the M235 is just a symptom of change, a new direction that’s working for now, but may or may not work forever. After all, if you want to know what the yuppies who made BMW big in North America drive today, just ask your local Porsche salesperson.
(Photo credits: BMW, Bimmerpost, Facebook)
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I bought a 2021 M235i about 7 months ago and I’ve been loving every minute of it. I wanted AWD (so no M cars) and I’m also not interested in rowing my own gears. I like that it’s a tiny luxury car with nearly every feature an 8 series gets and it’s plenty fast.
I saw the internet hate before I bought it (Not a “real M”, “it’s a mini”, it’s FWD based” or the oft seen “It looks like a Kia” malign, which isn’t really an effective slight anymore considering Kia/Hyundai designs have been home-runs for years now… and those opinions did not sway me at all.
It didn’t hurt that the previous owner of this particular BMW literally ticked every single option box (except “sport seats”, which is actually good as that would have deleted the seat heaters too). This one stickered for over 57K.
It’s a pretty sharp and fun little car that can get mileage in the high 30s if you take it easy, which isn’t easy; It wants to go and it makes fun bangs/pops when you get on it so who am I to argue?
“ I wanted AWD (so no M cars)”
My M3 is AWD.
Can someone give me the sales pitch for a modern BMW? Up through certainly the mid-2000s and maybe into the 2010s, I could give you exactly what the pitch was, but they sure moved on from that one – I just can’t figure out what the new one is.
BMW – A really nice machine for driving.
GIAAANNNTTTTTTT NOSTRRILLLLL GRILLLEESSSSSSS
https://i.imgur.com/g41VVkM_d.webp
the bmw //M badge. If everyone’s super no one is! The Bmw M badge .. about as meaningful as a handicap parking spot in a retirement home…
Honestly i’m okay with the M model not being the “top of the line” car but rather “this is the enthusiast spec” As long as their is like certain criteria like they all have the big brakes, and the stiff suspension and a LSD ect… Bmw used to have all these weird codes/packages for their “enthusiast” spec non M cars that made trying to actually shop for one .. impossible. Dealer’s wouldn’t know to advertise it. Some would advertise the car has it and it doesn’t really. MUCH simpler to just put the dumb upside down W on the trunk and call it a day!
This story features 100% horrible people.
I’ve been thinking about this for too long, and I think I’ve arrived at:
This M badge means nothing, and everything.
An M3 drifting in a Forza Motorsport 2 commercial legitimately and truly awakened a car lust and love in me. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that commercial. And yet, almost 20 years later, BMW owes me nothing (okay well the bike still damn well better be under warranty), and I owe BMW everything for cars (okay well not really). M rapidly meant a world to me, and to many other people. But BMW was never my friend, and it never owed me anything. Purely design-wise: the badge is soup-sandwich absurd. M-wise, I’d love to be outraged, and I am at plenty of things, but I’ll just try to appreciate that if I’m really looking for the best M3, I’ll get a Blackwing, Job willing.
You described the problem here without realizing it. BMW is now a company that exists to please shareholders, contrary to what it was ~30 years ago when it was a company that existed to please drivers.
Diluting the ///M brand is a great commercial decision because everybody wants an M, they just couldn’t afford it, but now they can and without the “tax” associated with M maintenance. Switching to FWD is a great commercial decision because a lot of people don’t even know it and it saves BMW money.
The problem is that those are terrible decisions long-term. If everybody owns an M then there’s nothing you or your kids will aspire to own from the brand. I had an E39 M5 poster in my bedroom when I was a teenager. Do you think someone’s going to do the same with an (ugh) M2…35?
Same as with RWD, it was a differentiating factor, as it was having inline 6 engines which this car being FWD can’t have.
Say what you want about Porsche, but they are doing it right as they are not chasing sales but gradually improving on what makes a Porsche great (good sales are a consequence, not a goal). I wish BMW understood this.
BMW, and every other corporation, has ALWAYS existed for the shareholders FIRST and FOREMOST. That they managed to do that by making the cars they did back in the day was a quirk of the times. Today, people really have no interest in “driver’s cars” they are too busy fucking around with the infotainment. The tiny numbers of people who just want to drive buy Miatas and 718s and whatnot. In very TINY numbers. Realistically, like myself, they just don’t buy new cars period anymore.
The overwhelming majority of BMWs ever built have had four cylinders. Note that BMW’s HQ in Munich is four round towers to evoke a four cylinder engine, not SIX round towers.
BMW using the *excellent* MINI platform that they have spent billions honing to build their smallest car on is entirely logical. And pays big dividends on interior space. The original 1-series was fun and all, but it was not particularly competitive because of that, and too expensive to build profitably. In the US, we only got the coupe and convertible that sold in tiny numbers in the rest of the world – the real 1-series was meant to be a competitor to the nicer Golfs, and it was a failure at that.
The ///M brand has been largely meaningless since the e30 M3. At this point, it’s just “the most expensive one”. They have been too big, heavy, and luxurious to be track weapons for 35 years now with rare exceptions.
Ultimately, BMW is dead to me, but how they badge their cars is the absolute least of it, and I still think they drive better than the competition as a general rule.
Porsche is an SUV company that makes a handful of sports cars on the side today, and you think they are some kind of purists who aren’t chasing sales? Get out of here with that nonsense.
There are DOZENS of us now so offended that we won’t buy a BMW ever again!
DOZENS!!!
Don’t worry, BMW found tens of thousands of insecure people that need a car that screams, “LOOK AT ME SO I FEEL VALIDATION!” And better yet, those kinds of people are willing to take on high interest loans to get a shouty car.
You mean overpriced leases? Cause I’d bet that’s where these are all going, haha!
Na, I’m talking about the ones who buy the used off lease ones. At least the one who originally took the overpriced lease doesn’t have crippling repair bills coming at 60k miles.
Plenty of room under the M badge to add a Vtec one, too.
BMW M division used to make exclusive, refined performance cars – now they make money
They know their clientele very well. And it ain’t us weird, broke Autopians
When I purchased my first BMW, a1999 E36 323i in 2002 with M sport package, I thought it was so cool to have the M steering wheel and rims. Yes, it was an E36, they made the convertible one additional year. It gave the car prestige in my mind. If people can’t tell the difference between the models and the M packages help sell cars, I don’t see an issue. What company doesn’t cash in on brand equity? Look how hard Starbucks worked to build their brand on quality, now cashing in with shitty coffee on volume. Now on my 4th BMW, a 2024 M3, don’t really care what the brand does, but hopefully they keep making serious M cars for people like me and keep making money to finance it with the fluff fake stuff.