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EVOLVE 1M
Straight out-of-the-box the 1 Series M CoupĂŠ is a superb driving machine but Evolve has liberated significantly more power from the twin-turbo terror to make it a real road warrior Words: Bob Harper Photography: Dave Smith
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ike many of you I’m a die-hard M car fan and were I rather more well-heeled than I am I’d have a garage stuffed full of them. I love their combination of blistering performance, everyday docility and practicality and generally speaking their subtle looks that allow you, for the most part, to travel quickly without attracting too much attention. If you want to stand out from the crowd you can choose an M-only colour scheme but as I’m a bit of a shrinking violet I’d have the majority of mine in grey, black or some of the more nondescript blue hues and I’d opt for the smallest alloys, too. Currently my favourite M car to use everyday is probably the E90 M3. The four-door body in a drab
L The 80mm slash cut tips and subtle Evolve script on the exhaust are about the only things that mark this 1M out as anything out-of-the-ordinary
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EVOLVE 1M hue, debadged and running on 18s would pass under the radar as far as the vast majority of the population is concerned yet when you find that deserted section of road you know you can really put the hammer down and revel in what will probably be the last ever naturally aspirated M engine. Which brings us in a rather convoluted manner to the subject of today’s feature, a Valencia orange 1 Series M Coupé. Given what I’ve written above you could be forgiven for thinking that this is just the sort of machine that is too in-your-face for my understated proclivities… but I absolutely love it! It might fly in the face of everything I’ve said I look for in an M car, but it looks tough as hell with its pumped-up arches and huge 19-inch CSL-style alloys that almost take on
comedy proportions when fitted to something as small as a 1 Series. Just three colours were available and while black can hide some of the bodywork’s excesses it looks pretty dramatic in either white or the Valencia orange hue we have here. If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly! In its standard form the 1M isn’t shy – with a quoted output of 340hp and 332lb ft of torque BMW claims a 0-62mph time of just 4.9 seconds, and investigation by the tuners has discovered that these are pretty conservative figures that BMW has come up with, with most 1M’s putting out around 360hp in their standard tune. While for many people the 1M will be plenty fast enough there are those, like this car’s owner, Clive,
who always fancy a little bit more. Clive has a bit of a history when it comes to big power conversions having owned an Audi TT that he took up to 500hp and an Audi B5 RS4 that was also pretty wild as a result of fitting 100-cell cats and a remap. After that Clive saw the light and moved from Ingolstadt to Munich and for several years he was very happy with an E82 135i M Sport Coupé and thanks to a remap from the chaps at Evolve he thought it would be a keeper. Of course, BMW came along and ruined it by launching the 1M and while initially Clive resisted the car’s allure he eventually took the plunge without even having driven one. While he was initially impressed with the performance his previous form with turbocharged
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machinery meant that it was almost inevitable his 1M would be subjected to a performance upgrade and having been delighted with the work carried out on his 135i by Evolve he returned to the company to turn up the wick on the 1M. Evolve has had a host of experience of tuning the 135i with the N54 twin-turbo straight-six and given that the 1M comes with this engine, albeit with the benefit of a performance package from BMW, it knew that the skills it had developed for the 135i would work well on the 1M. However, while a remap would liberate a decent amount of additional power – circa 30-40hp – Clive’s previous experience with modified machines led him to believe that for not that much additional outlay significantly more performance could be found. While Evolve originally concentrated mainly on software it has started to develop its own range of performance hardware to complement its software expertise and after much design and testing work it now has a new Front-Mounted Intercooler (FMIC), Evolve cat-less downpipes and an Evolve Race rear exhaust to help boost the 1M’s potential. The FMIC has been constructed to Evolve’s specification and during the design process the company was very keen that not only should it offer the potential to
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EVOLVE 1M You hit the wall of torque that really kicks in from around 1750rpm and from there it just keeps surging forward with no let up
significantly improve power output by ensuring lower intake temperatures but also that it should literally be a bolt on conversion and as a result it uses all the original mountings and connectors which can’t be said for the majority of the FMICs on the market. The rear exhaust box was designed for the 1M after requests from many customers for an Evolve exhaust. Evolve is already a distributor for Supersprint so in this case it made sense for it to approach the famous Italian manufacturer and the two companies have worked together to create an Evolve rear exhaust section. Made from T304 stainless steel the exhaust has 80mm staggered, rolled-in, slash-cut tips which compliment the 1M’s aggressive look. The sound has been designed to be sporty but without any drone inside the cabin. The most recent item on Evolve’s list of kit for the 1M are some cat-less downpipes which remove the restrictive first set of cats while retaining the middle pair that have a far less negative effect in the quest for power. Combine all that lot together and you have what Evolve calls the Stage 3 tune for the 1M and the whole shooting match can be installed for £4000. For your money you’ll be getting 430hp and a simply staggering 475lb ft of torque – gains of 90hp and 143lb ft over BMW’s quoted figures. Perhaps most
importantly Evolve realises the need for reliability and longevity of components and reckons it hasn’t gone mad with the boost and that its conversion for the 1M is still running significantly less boost than many cars are running in the US where tuning both 1Ms and 135is has proved hugely popular. So that’s the theory, but what’s Evolve’s 1M like to drive? Other than a slightly bassier tone to the exhaust on start-up there really is nothing to tell you this 1 Series is packing some serious power, and as far as I’m concerned that’s the way it should be with a wellthought-out conversion. Pottering out of Luton shortshifting through the ’box and only using a small amount of the throttle’s travel and you could be in any 1M Coupé, but as the oil temperature gauge registers that the engine’s up to working temperature it’s time to give it some beans. We’ve driven up to Luton in the M Performance M3 that you can read about on page 32 so I’m used to being in a quick car, but the ferocity of the 1M’s acceleration still takes me by surprise. It really is of the hang-on for dear life nature when you hit the wall of torque that really kicks-in from around 1750rpm and from there it just keeps surging forward with no let up in its acceleration bar the briefest of pauses while you snatch another gear in the slick six-speed ’box.
It seems to matter little what gear you’re in, bury the throttle into the carpet and you’ll be flying into the next county before you know it. As well as there being power and torque seemingly everywhere in the rev range there’s improved throttle response from the Evolve setup with a more incremental feel to the way that the engine responds to your inputs. When you’re gunning through the gears and you’ve passed through the torque sweet spot you really get into the power band and unlike the factory state of tune where there isn’t a whole lot of point revving that much further than 5000rpm as this is where the power curve starts to tail-off the Evolve 1M just keeps pulling and feels much like a larger capacity normally aspirated unit. All the while you’re entertained by the noise coming from the Evolve exhaust which is loud enough to let you know it’s there and certainly releases a bit more of the engine’s aural potential than the standard exhaust, yet it isn’t so noisy as to become wearing. We didn’t do a huge amount of constant speed driving on our test but a quick blast up the dual carriageway didn’t exhibit any drone, but we didn’t have the time to test it at every point in the rev range. What the run up the dual carriageway did demonstrate was how refined the whole package feels and just how hard it’ll
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pull, even in sixth gear at fairly low rpms. All-in-all this is a machine that can be used everyday with ease, and in fact Clive does just that. Stick to part throttle inputs and it’ll cruise all day long returning decent economy but hit the back roads and it makes its Jekyll and Hyde transformation in the blink of an eyelid and subjectively it feels like one of the fastest accelerating machines I’ve ever driven. It’s also a testament to quite what a good package the 1M is as these fairly prodigious power and torque gains certainly don’t feel like they’re going to overwhelm the chassis and the brakes felt well up to the job of stopping it, too. Clive has toyed with the idea of perhaps going down the KW suspension route but at the moment he feels that there’s little to be gained over the stock BMW setup. Will there be even more power in the pipeline? Again, Clive’s certainly thought about this, as the question doesn’t catch him unawares, and while he reckons that changing the turbos would certainly see another step change in performance he’s not ready for that quite yet as it would bring about compromises in everyday drivability – which is one of the things he currently loves about his car, the duality of its abilities. It’s not often that I slip behind the wheel of an E92 M3 and think ‘hmm, this isn’t fast enough’ but that was exactly how I felt when I returned home from Evolve’s Luton HQ. After driving Clive’s 1M I think I’ve just found my new favourite M Car l
CONTACT: Evolve Automotive Tel: 0871 231 1001 Web: www.evolveautomotive.com
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