Photo: Craigslist
Today’s Nice Price or No Dice M2 has a lot of M4 componentry hiding under its skirts, albeit in a smaller and (slightly) lighter package. Let’s see if this rare manual-equipped version is worth lightening one’s wallet.
The only similarity between Monday’s 1998 Honda Prelude and the 1994 Ford F250 XLT we looked at yesterday was in the color. They were both white as a ghost. Other than that, the Honda was built (and rebuilt) for fun while the Ford was all about getting down to work. You all liked the Ford a lot better, and you liked its $6,500 asking price even more. That resulted in a solid 80 percent Nice Price win.
Photo: Craigslist
Okay, enough with all the white. What are we, getting married? Today’s 2016 BMW M2 is painted in a glorious azure called Long Beach Blue by BMW. Is that for Long Beach, California, presently home to the Queen Mary? or for Long Beach, New York, the center-most of Nassau County’s outer-barrier islands? We’ll have to ponder that.
The M2 is the nominal successor to the 1 Series M Coupe. BMW had already used the M1 badge on the legendary mid-engine sports car so it had to go with the oddball 1 Series M Coupe name for that one. With the introduction of the 2 Series, things thankfully fell into better alignment with the existing “M— model line” naming convention.
Photo: Craigslist
That’s a good thing since not only does M2 sound more familiar when placed in the lineup next to the M3, M4, and on up, but the little squirt of a car uses a lot of the go-faster and run-lighter bits from its bigger sisters too. Fitting all those performance parts in a significantly smaller package meant that something had to give, though, and that resulted in the M2 wearing flared arches front and rear covering a track that’s 2 inches wider at the front and fully 3 inches fatter at the back than on the lesser 2 Series. The wheels are also from the bigger cars — 19-inch Style 437M alloys wrapped in 35-series rubber.
Photo: Craigslist
The contemporary M3/M4 do have a leg up on the M2 in the engine bay. Those cars get the twin-turbo S55 straight six while the M2 has to make do with a single-turbo N55. That’s still three liters of fun, good for 365 horsepower and 343 lb-ft of torque. Some over-boost pixie dust spread by BMW engineers on the engine allows that last number to jump to 369 lb-ft for short sprints.
The result is zero to sixty times of around 4.2 seconds with the six-speed manual, as is equipped here. Cars with the seven-speed M-DCT dual-clutch gearbox are a tick faster. Massive discs help pull the performance back when the need for speed is replaced by the need to not crash into things.
Photo: Craigslist
All that performance comes at a cost, which in the M2’s case is weight and space. Befitting all the M3/M4 parts and the need to balloon the car around them, the M2 is only about 100 pounds lighter than the bigger bruisers. It’s also a bit more cramped inside with back seats that are best saved for people you don’t like very much.
Photo: Craigslist
Still, these are cars that we can like very much, and this one, with just 58K on the clock (or about 8,300 miles a year) looks to be a peach. It’s also seen some mods and maintenance in its past. The seller claims that the OEM front winglets and rear blade are after-the-fact and were added by the previous owner. According to the ad, the previous owner also added a high-flow catalytic converter to the exhaust. The present owner says that the original cat comes with the car for passing emissions tests but gee-whiz, who wants to have to switch out the cat every two years to get the car smogged?
Other updates include new rotors and pads and Michelin S4 tires. The seller denotes a service history split between shops in Beverly Hills, California, and Broomfield, Colorado. The car wears Colorado plates but is advertised on the Los Angeles Craigslist as though it’s local. The ad’s pictures having been shot in an enclosed parking structure also don’t help with pinning down the location.
Photo: Craigslist
Regardless of where it is, the car seems to be in tip-top shape. The paint holds an as-new shine with just some minor peppering on the nose to detract. The interior shows no obvious wear on the leather seating surfaces or the plastics. It’s also a new enough car to have all the bells and whistles you could want.
The seller does note an accident in the car’s history, but apparently, that wasn’t bad enough to total the car since it’s claimed to have a clean title. The reason given for the sale is the seller’s desire to have a bigger car, although they state in the ad that the M2 is engaging enough that they would be just as happy keeping it.
To relieve them of that decision, a buyer would need to come up with $39,500 which the seller says is set in consideration of the accident on its record. That’s pretty much at the low end for a clean title M2 (salvage title cars typically command about $8K less) but is it still a deal?
What do you think about this Long Beach Blue M2 and that $39,500 price tag? Does that seem like a good price for the littlest M? Or is that too much to ask when M4s aren’t all that much more?
You decide!
Los Angeles, California, Craigslist, or go
if the ad disappears.
H/T to Don R. for the hookup!
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Keyword: At $39,500, Is This Manual-Equipped 2016 BMW M2 Automatically a Good Deal?