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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While I dislike BMW’s current direction, it will not hurt their sales. The people buying new BMW’s nowadays really don’t give a damn about the brand’s history or what it stands for, it’s just another European luxury brand with the vague idea of performance behind it. I work at a dealership where the hottest selling vehicles are the X1, X3, and X5, if that says anything. Mind you, I’m in the last place anybody needs an SUV (AZ) since it never rains or snows here. This is why I hoard parts for old BMW’s like the E34 5-series, because I intend to keep driving old BMW’s for as long as I possibly can.
M is for money.
This has been happening for quite a while now, so why the surprise? I wonder if remaining BMW enthusiasts fifteen years from now will lament the exciting and lithe cars they’re making today as the last of the good ones?
Also, welcome to my world, BMW nerds. Every manufacturer I liked has either disappeared or turned to making crap I don’t like. Ironically, I had to end up in a dreaded Toyota* of all things to get a daily I enjoy driving.
*Really almost entirely a Subaru, which I used to love, but they stopped making what I like and went on to . . . much higher sales. Same as BMW. So it goes.
Don’t worry, the Tesla folks have already taken over the “M” anyway. Every reference to a “Model S, 3, X,or Y” is just shortened to “M3”, “MY”, etc or add in “P” like in “M3P” for the Performance version.
Add in Hyundai “N”, Audi S line, RS, etc and any other sporting letters, for most people they are just letters now.
The real people who care anyways probably debadge their cars anyway.
Im not mad at BMW anymore….just , disappointed
That’s just parent for mad 😉
In the sober light of day, I’d also like to add that this makes it all the more important to keep the (2003) Z4 alive forever. It’s pretty much my perfect car, even for all the rat-bastarding turd craps that keep breaking on it.
Should have called it the 235JCW, since it’s a Mini underneath
235JFW (Johannes Fassbender Werke)
If they cared about such things, they should have stopped buying years ago when BMW’s coupes grew rear doors.
Wait, I thought the M253 was a mortar weapon, or grenade launcher or something. It’s a car? WTH?
M252. 60mm mortar. 5.2 liters is a bit of a load for a 2-series, but the weight balance would be hysterical to drive.
Well they can go buy an AMG car instead. Oh wait, Mercedes is slapping that on CLA and GLAs that don’t even have the handcrafted motor anymore. And their whole line of bar of soap shaped EVs wears the AMG badge.
And is that Audi A4 S-Line just like an S4? There is a similar looking badge on there. I bet plenty of people like to think so.
I am pretty butthurt about the changes Audi is making to their own performance badging. Taking the grille badge off of S and RS models was dumb, and putting a red square on the trunk of A models was very dumb. And with the new grilles it’s even harder to tell an A from an S from an RS. Audi is guilty of the same thing BMW and Merc are doing.
Even the Q models are getting the dumb red parallelogram thing.
It was always popular to debadge Audis because the S and A models look almost exactly the same (cool if you have an S4, lame if you have an A4) but now they’ve solved that problem by just making everything look like an S model.
Oh, don’t get me started on Mercedes-Benz AMG-ing all the things…
…but it comes back to idiot buyers too. For a time, we’d frequently see older Asian and Russian men uncomfortably burbling around San Francisco in AMG S Classes – when it was clear that they just wanted the most expensive S Class and not a high-power, high-performance sedan. (Why do you think Mercedes-Benz revived Maybach?)
Then there’s the AMG G-Wagens in LA shuttling between Neiman Marcus, the Polo Lounge and CAA – They’re not getting anywhere faster because of the larger wheels and handbuilt engines, and the farthest off-road they’ll ever go is the parking lot at Nobu Malibu. It’s all about the badge.
Volkswagen “R-Line.” Not a Golf R, just an R badge on all the models.
https://www.gunthervw.net/volkswagen-r-line.htm
I was enjoying the M = Marketing article, but was then greatly confused at the last two photos of a KN Forte?
This comment is rich in nourishing, takedown-flavored truths.
КИ
It’s the only thing the have left, after they fucked up the design. So they put it on almost everything to survive. I believe it is called peeing your pants to stay warm in business terms?
I think we’re missing the point here: as long as the turn signals never get used it’s a *real M car*
As someone who had 5 BMWs in a row but lost interest 8 years ago, I don’t really care but 1) BMW isn’t emphasising the M2 it’s emphasising the 2 – all new 1 series and 2 series have a larger leading number on the badge 2) as Kevin Rhodes said the M535i came before the M5… can I fit any more numbers into a comment?
Cars have become a fisher price hot wheels parody of themselves haven’t they
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?
You know I disagree with almost everything you’re saying but it’s always cool to hear when someone buys a car and really enjoys it! The car internet like most of the internet is so judgemental
Indeed. I didn’t go out car shopping looking to own a BMW, it found me while I was looking at the other cars I planned to buy.
“ I wanted AWD (so no M cars)”
My M3 is AWD.
Cool. I thought all the M cars were RWD. Most of them seem to be.
You have to buy the most recent Bugs Bunny Edition M3 to get AWD.
that is just a wrong M3
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.
Up until 100k miles, after which, your lease is most certainly up and you really need to lease another BMW bc unless you are a poor (or worse an enthusiast) you attempt to maintain it yourself, we’ve designed it in such a way that it will drive you (pun intended) to the poor house trying to keep it reliable, you know some obscure o-rings buried deep w/in the engine assembly that must be changed to prevent leaking oil…
Company car / leased car seems to be the BMW, Mercedes, Audi strategy for easily the past 20 years…
As the morning dump confirmed the “company car” in Europe is a standard part of millions of professional white collar working stiffs compensation package with healthy govt. subsidies for both companies and employees reinforcing this behavior
GIAAANNNTTTTTTT NOSTRRILLLLL GRILLLEESSSSSSS
https://i.imgur.com/g41VVkM_d.webp
Angry Beavers
“This thing looks obnoxious so it will draw attention from people as you drive it around. And then when they see it they will realize that it is something expensive. From which they will assume you make a lot of money. This will make you feel good about yourself.”
Not saying I don’t love some of the luxury cars out there but this is the pitch lol. And then when every brand tries to out do each other on the looking obnoxious part you end up with stuff like the warthog snout grille, alien vs predator grill from Lexus, dinner plate sized light up Mercedes emblems, etc etc.
Making cars that are satisfying/interesting to drive is a total waste of time for these companies. I don’t think most of their customer bases care about that at all. Also how you end up with 5000 lb m cars that indeed are fast as hell on paper but frankly pointless
New BMWs:
“You’ve leased our cars for the past 12 years – It’s time to trade in for another one.”
CPO BMW’s:
“Sure you could buy a new Camry – but wouldn’t you rather be seen in one of these?”
I had 3 BMWs in a row in the years past. Now I’d rather be seen in a Camry.
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 kinda read their complaints as “but people won’t know MY car is special! How will normies know how much I spent when budget cars get similar badges??”
This really is the problem with luxury and performance cars isn’t it? The point is supposed to be that you as the owner enjoy the car you are driving. Because it’s useful, because it’s fun, because it’s comfortable, etc. it’s all so wrapped up in status and on paper numbers.
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.
Ok, a lot to unpack here.
Untrue. Up until the late 90’s most luxury German automakers were run by engineers, not accountants. Mercedes suffered a massive drop in quality around the same era as BMW (early 00’s). The trunk hinge mechanism in my E39 is a piece of engineering art, something that will never get made today. There were other clear indications of overengineering, costs be damned.
So you mean to tell me that a joint effort across a whole company, with slogans even touting “the ultimate DRIVING machine” was just a quirk? Nice explanation.
I would like to see that data, Spock. Also, I didn’t say there was anything wrong with a 4 cylinder. I said that the inline 6 has always been a differentiating factor as virtually all other car makers have abandoned it. You can get an I4 in a Honda Civic but you can’t get an I6 in anything other than a BMW (save for a few exceptions).
Bullshit. The M brand kept churning win after win, peaking with the E39 M5 as an overall package and the E60 M5 for that absolute masterpiece of an engine. The M brand started diluting once it was no longer the top spec, replaced by the Competition or CS models. Even older non-M but “M badged” models like the E24 635CSi were the top of the range.
Hmm, let’s see Porsche’s current lineup. I see 4 sport cars and 2 SUVs for sale, not counting variations of said sport cars, so that’s a lie. Perhaps you mean historically? The Cayenne, their first SUV, has only been around for 1/5th of their history (100 years). The remaining 80 years have been just sports cars.
The way I see it, Porsche SUVs help finance their real business, which is sports cars. A 911 hasn’t lost its essence, but the latest M5 has.
You really have no concept of the history of the company, and have been swallowing the *US* marketing hook, line, and sinker.
Other than in the US, six-cylinder engines in BMWs were an expensive and rarely ordered option. And while the US is an important market for BMW, it was nothing like a majority of sales. The vast majority of BMWs sold in the rest of the world yesterday and today have four cylinder engines.
Continuing to use inline sixes on SOME of their cars is nice and all (and I own two BMWs so equipped), but so does Mercedes. And at this point, it’s really more a matter of saving a buck than some sort of engineering purity. It allows them to have a single engine family with 3, 4, and 6 cylinder members across the big sellers in their range.
And most people, at least in my world of potholes a frost heaves would actually much prefer a regular 3 series to an M3 – unless it is for their fun car and not their daily driver – the pure Ms have a really harsh ride on most public roads (although I have not driven one recently).
Let’s face it – 95% of M cars are bought to show that the owner can afford one, not because they have any use of the largely useless additional capability that those cars have.
I see a surprising number of pure M cars – usually near the Whole Foods parking lot driven by soccer moms. Maybe I am getting too old, but from a pure sustainability perspective why would you want a car with way worse mpg than even the next down in the model lineup – you are not really going to notice the difference in a 3.9 zero to 60 mph versus a 4.9 in normal driving – anything under 5 seconds is really fast. At least most BMWs have a lot of throttle tip in so the soccer mom may not ever realize how fast these cars can be. Do these people even know what they are buying?
This is probably word for word what people said when Porsche released the Cayenne. They are doing fine now, and I bet that most people who swore everlasting hatred on Porsche for it have mellowed out. I think that BMW will be just fine, wether or not they just make sports cars.
I wish corporations had to focus on stakeholder value, not shareholder value. Imagine the difference if they cared about the consumers.
Imagine if they cared about the employees!
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
Does anyone remember that one old rap song “I look funny, but yo I’m makin’ money”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBsjggc5jHM
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.