BMW M2 – interior and tech
Beautifully built and with tech you’d normally find in the class above
The M2 was the first BMW alongside the M3 Touring to get the curved display when new, which looks like a mite squashed into the M2’s smaller cockpit. Updated for 2025 with BMW OS 8.5 it’s slick and crisp, though significantly, the new M2 now moves its climate controls into the touch screen, away from physical rotaries. While that’s a shame, the familiar and tactile iDrive clickwheel lives on.
As with other modern M-cars, you can mix and match modes for the dampers, steering, engine map, brake pressure and traction control (with ten stages as per the M3/M4, and the more general halfway-off M Dynamic Mode for stability and traction). You can store your favourite settings via the M1 and M2 triggers on the steering wheel to save delving into the menus each time.
Interior quality is high, with optional carbon trim and an M-specific steering wheel providing the racy ambience you’d expect of an M car. The new M2’s steering wheel has been revised, now coming with a flat bottom for the first time (to what benefit we are unsure) while removing the button for the wheel heating in the process (another screen-bound control).
The M2’s optional M Carbon bucket seats (£4450, complete with their odd carbonfibre codpiece dividers, giving you one channel for each leg) are hard work to climb into but plumb you nicely into the cabin. It would be nice if they could sink just a touch lower but the driving position is still far lower than you’d find in many performance cars, with plenty of adjustment.
Right-hand drive manual M2s have an offset pedal box, and we’d recommend trying the M Carbon buckets with the three-pedal option before committing to them. Some have complained that the central divider on the seat base can make using both feet a little uncomfortable, the man mount in the seats liable to grazing for larger-thighed folks when operating the clutch.
