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Whatever happened to subtle?

Subtlety is an important concept when it comes to cars, some cars you want to shout loudly – conveying a message about you, the driver – but in most cases you really do not need a car to impart a message on the world.

This vital idea seems to have slipped the minds of some of the world’s most foremost manufacturers at the moment, with many churning out designs that say not particularly positive things about their drivers.

Take the new BMW M3, the front end of that car is about as subtle as being whacked in the face with a mallet. But it wasn’t always this way, many previous generations of M3 have been almost indistinguishable from their 3-Series counterparts.

BMW says that buyers of their performance models want to stand out and that they do not like the fact that the M3 had serious performance in an unassuming body, but isn’t that the whole point of the car? A ‘sleeper’ that to most looks like any other saloon but swing it into a corner and it’s an oversteer machine, is that not what the M3 and all the other cars of its class were built for?

There is an argument that times have changed and people want their cars to be shouty, in fact, I saw a bright orange new M3 with a massive rear wing tacked to its back (why?) but I think the majority of the car enthusiast population want to know that they have performance, not show it to the world.

I understand that many M3 buyers are not going to send it sideways around a B-road bend, they just want to shout that they have bought the fastest one and prove to their supposed mates that they are the best but that isn’t what the car was designed for. It was designed to be the ultimate driving machine, not the ultimate posing machine.

So here’s an idea for you BMW, offer a mad, shouty, tasteless M3 for all the posers in the world that want one and then offer a more subtle M3, maybe the M3 underpinnings under the normal 3-Series body for all the enthusiasts out there – much better.

Do comment your thoughts below.

Published in Thoughts and Takes

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Nicholas Matthews
1 year ago

Great article and honestly makes me miss old style BMW cars in general. Have actually ridden in a few older ones and they are true sleepers especially when you can’t tell the difference between a regular 3 series and the M3. Wish they could go back to subtle one of these days hopefully.

Nicholas Matthews
1 year ago
Reply to  Gabi B

Yeah I can agree with that for sure.

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