Feature
Action Coupé Words: Will Beaumont Photos: BMW
It isn’t the new M4 or the 625hp M8 Competition. It isn’t even the wonderfully insane M5 CS; rear bucket seats, GT3-style yellow lamps, gold wheels and all. Despite each car’s commitment to thrills and speed, none of them exposes BMW’s commitment to pleasing enthusiast drivers quite as well as the new 220d Coupé.
H
ear me out. It would have been so easy for BMW to follow its own template and spin a twodoor coupé from its current 1 Series platform. It could have made a front-wheel drive 2 Series Coupé as easily as it made, oh I don’t know, the 2 Series Gran Coupé. Simple, cheap and, as BMW has already taken a blow to its reputation and opened its arms to front-wheel drive
32 BMW Car Club Magazine May 2022
cars, no one would have lost any sleep over a transverse-engined sporty twodoor. Just another Audi TT, Volkswagen Scirocco, Peugeot RCZ rival, no harm in that. It’s what everyone does. Or did, when people wanted coupés and not crossovers. But BMW didn’t take the easiest path. It didn’t follow trends. It didn’t do the obvious thing. Instead, it got
hold of the platform that underpins the 3 and 4 Series, which BMW calls Cluster Architecture (CLAR), and has squeezed and shrunk it to make a direct replacement for the old 2 Series Coupé. Longitudinal front-mounted engine and drive going through the rear axle. Traditional BMW credentials. The chop job on the floor pan is even more impressive when you consider www.bmwcarclubgb.uk
