BMW M3 Competition review

For the moment, though, the M3 is rear-wheel drive, which is why it has an M Drift Analyser, which will give you a star rating out of five for how well you’ve done your sliding – based on distance travelled sideways and the angle of your dangle, not including the number of lamp-posts you take out while failing to gather it up on the exit of a roundabout.

You don’t have to be in a drifty setting, by the way. There are Road and Track driving modes and you can configure the engine, gearbox, steering, damper and even brake- pedal responses individually through the infotainment system to Comfort, Sport and, for some characteristics, Sport Plus levels – and store your two favourite combinations on steering- wheel-mounted shortcut levers.

Doing all this is much easier than with some rivals’ systems, and the whole iDrive set-up is great – a mix of touchscreen and rotary dial, with supplementary buttons on the centre console and a whole load of other normal buttons on the dashboard, some of which are configurable. This might just be the best in the business.

Read our BMW M3 Competition Touring review

The rest of the interior seems as swishly put together and is similarly functional, with a brilliantly adjustable driving position, a round (if overly thick) steering wheel and clear digital instruments.

Whatever you do, though, don’t spec the optional M Carbon Bucket Seats (in a £3400 pack with some other options), with their curious raised insert between your thighs. In single-seat or very serious racing cars, seats shaped like this, even more exaggerated, make sense: they keep your legs in place under high cornering loads and prevent them from flailing in a crash. In a road car, what appears to be some kind of carbonfibre penis tray looks daft and is plain obstructive.

How does the M3 Competition perform on the road?

There’s a slight error on BMW’s online M3 configurator, too: a detail picture shows the car with a manual gearbox. Not on the Competition model, so not in the UK, where the only gearbox is an eight-speed regular torque-converter automatic, rather than a dual-clutch (DCT) unit, driving via an electronically controlled limited-slip differential.

It suits the car. A DCT tends to be sharper in operation but harsher than a conventional automatic, although the latest ’boxes are so good that there’s not a huge amount of difference, save for additional smoothness around town. BMW seems to have set this one up to feel as assertive as it can, and it combines with an engine that has a similar demeanour.

At low speeds, there’s a tappety, gravelly noise that never quite emerges from angry into smooth as the engine revs rise, and even if you choose Comfort mode for your engine response and leave the gearbox in Drive at its meekest setting, step-off from rest is brisk. It’s tricky to modulate the brakes, too, especially if you leave them in their Comfort mode (the Sport mode’s firmer pedal feel is honestly the only one this car needs). Combine those things together and the M3’s drivetrain feels particularly alert.

So too does its chassis. I recently spent some time with Jaguar dynamics engineers, who told me that German roads – and the Nürburgring – are no use for chassis development, bar some autobahn stability tuning, because they’re too smooth compared with Britain’s network. I would bet reasonable money that the new M3 had never seen a British road until production demonstrators arrived.

There are three firmness settings for the adaptive dampers, but while good roads suit the M3 nicely, plenty of B-roads are too much even for Comfort mode, over which it jiggles all apiece.

I don’t think the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio does this (although that’s a question that road test editor Matt Saunders will be answering for sure in good time).

On the plus side, the M3’s body control is really well restrained. Its body rigidity feels outstanding and you would swear that, bar the give in the dampers and springs, there was precious little slack in the suspension.

The steering is light and consistent and accurate, if giving little road feel, although that doesn’t seem to matter. Because it feels like there’s so little give or squidge anywhere, you know precisely what’s going on.