I drove one of these two years ago, and I didn’t care for it at all. It wasn’t bad at anything, I couldn’t point to anything specifically wrong with it, but it just didn’t click. But I can also think of times when martinis, mushrooms, sashimi, and Saabs didn’t do anything for me at all, and I remember the moments when they all clicked for me and became favourites. With this 2025 BMW M2, I hoped maybe this time, it would finally click.

It should click because it ticks all the right boxes: right-sized, distinct styling with kick-ass box fender flares, a ‘roid-injected version of one of my favorite engines, three pedals, and just two driven wheels locked together by a limited slip differential. Beyond the driver centric stuff, it’s also, you know, quite a good car. iDrive is the best infotainment system in the business, it has a decent amount of room with usable back seats and a big trunk, and even the hardest BMWs ride pretty well, so it should be pretty comfortable.

All of these things are true. It’s a good car, it’s fast, it really doesn’t put a foot wrong, and it still failed to move me. I found myself parroting the same tired talking points of armchair experts, thinking it was a little too numb, too big, too refined for its own good, and I kinda felt it wasn’t meaningfully different enough from the wonderful Z4 M40i and the M3. I picked it up on Monday, declared that I didn’t love it on Tuesday, didn’t even look at it on Wednesday … and then it clicked.

I was on my way to shoot it. It was a nice evening, I had the windows down, and I was in the middle of nowhere -on a closed circuit, of course- and I took a fast sweeper a little too fast. I entered it hot, balancing the ball of my foot on the firm brake pedal as I goosed the throttle with the edge of my sneaker, sliding the short shifter straight upwards into third, with the 473-horsepower S58 straight-six blaring a baritone howl, backed by a chorus of theatrical (and only slightly obnoxious) overrun crackle.

I started feeding more steering angle into the front end through the wheel. What was too numb moments ago felt just right, with the front end relaying exacting communication through the sharp, quick-ratio steering rack, allowing me to start rolling on the power again. I wasn’t sure that this was a chassis that I could trust, but here I was, pushing it hard, putting my faith in its prowess, and it rewarded me by telegraphing exactly how early I could get back on the gas and trust the tires to tolerate the extreme lateral forces acting on them.

The balance all the way through was fabulous, very neutral and eager on turn in, with loads of grip, even on this tester’s snow tire package. It didn’t feel too edgy for its own good, and it encourages you to play with it and explore it – and I did. Now having rapidly established a rapport with this machine at the apex of the corner, I rolled on the throttle until it was at maximum attack, and rear end began very gently breaking away with a few degrees of yaw action, easing itself into a four wheel drift that needed almost no correction as the road straightened out and I slid the weighted shifter back into fourth and roared on, howling laughing and beaming like a bozo.

Yeah, it clicked. This car is brilliant. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, but I can’t unsee it now. There’s been a few tweaks to make it an even better car for 2025: 20 additional ponies, 40 additional foot-pounds of torque on the automatic cars, a newer version of iDrive, the same flat bottom steering wheel we’ve seen in other M cars, and a slew of new colour options, including the spectacular Twilight Purple pearl on this test car.

I struggled to see where it fit in BMW’s crowded lineup of heavy-hitter driver’s cars, with the M3/M3, Z4, and M2 all occupying a similar space but I see now the M2 is meant to be more of a manifestation of the classic BMW manner of doing things. The Z4 is great but it’s instantly walled off to some people because it’s a two-seat soft-top. The M3 and M4 have grown in size and scope, and inherited all wheel drive to stay sensible. The M2 is considerably more focused on purity, being a small, rear-drive coupe. The ZF eight-speed BMW uses in their M cars is brilliant but six-speed is the one to really get the most of this classic-ish experience.

Even before it clicked with me, I sort of equated this M2 to the golden-era E36-generation M3, because that car’s real trick was its ability to be a completely unassuming and unremarkable daily driver. Everyone remembers that car for being one of the best handling cars ever built and for being an icon of performance and touring car racing, but it was also just a really nice, well built, tidy little coupe that just so happened to drive unbelievably well. It’s a car that I could loan to my Mom for a grocery run. To her, it would just be a nice car.

This 2025 BMW M2 pulls off the same trick. When you want it to be, it’s just a car. A leather-lined, compact-ish, practical-ish little coupe that’ll get you to work and run your errands without a fuss. But as has always been the case with the best BMWs, it can make memories out of mundanity. How I missed that, I’ll never know.