BMWM240i xDrive Coupé

A M2-lite is no crime, but has all-wheel drive turned the M division’s stepson into a Jack of all trades but a master of none?

As far as milestones go, A M division. That said, evolution rendered its most recent decade precarious.

As the Bavarian skunkworksturned-marketing arm celebrates its golden anniversary of shrieking straight-sixes shredding millions of rear tyres, a perilous future awaits fossil-fuelled performance, and not only for BMW.

2022 is unquestionably a landmark year for BMW's All German premium brands are grappling with the existential discomfort of their superlatively efficient EV offerings outrunning the spawn of the very departments whose reason for being was once the pursuit of speed.

While the social and political pressure to produce cleaner cars ratchets up by the day, how much longer can competing technologies be expected to occupy the same showroom floor?

However, not all co-existences need be unviable. BMW's newly launched 2 Series is currently topped by the M240i, a model so carefully crafted as a seat-warmer for the hotter - and imminent M2 that it runs the risk of being labelled as contrived, were it not so good at what it does.

Labelled G42, the incoming coupé employs much of the current 3/4 Series hardware and not that of the 2 Series Grand Coupé. That's just as well, because the G42's cousins - the 1 Series hatch and 2 Series Grand Coupé - both switched to front-wheel propulsion, in 2019 and 2020, respectively: about as far from "M" as A is from Z.

Infinitely more BMW is the M240i's continued use of the brand's stalwart B58 three-litre, direct-injection turbocharged straight-six delivering 285 kW and 500 N.m. Pleasing to the ears and gut, only the addition of all-wheel drive to the debutant's footwork doesn't make it sit quite right in the heart.