SHARP Drives: The 2025 BMW M3 Is the Best BMW Yet
BMW’s catalog is massive, with dozens of coupes, SUVs, convertibles and sedans on offer in all shapes and sizes, with all manner of powertrains from batteries to big V8s. It’s daunting and messy and not all BMWs are created equal.
But, fear not, because we found the best BMW money can buy right now. This is it. This banana-coloured 2025 BMW M3, and that’s quite surprisingly because the list of things this M3 doesn’t have is quite long. It doesn’t have all-wheel drive. It “only” has 473 horsepower, not the 523 horses of the M3 Competition. It’s not even that quick by modern standards, and certainly not the quickest BMW. It doesn’t have BMW’s nice paddle-shifted automatic transmission. It doesn’t have the carbon-fibre bucket seats, nor the carbon mirror caps and interior trim, nor the fancy carbon ceramic brakes. It’s not an M3 Competition or a CS or CSL, just the regular old M3.
This lack of stuff is odd for a BMW, because BMW makes luxury cars, and luxury cars are supposed to have lots of stuff.
But, secretly, I think, BMW isn’t really a luxury car maker; they just do that to keep the lights on and pay the bills. Really what BMW is, at its heart, is a maker of respectable sports cars. The engineers in Munich are at their best when they’re designing a family-friendly station wagon that is actually an Autobhan missile in disguise, like the M5 Touring, or a seemingly grown-up alternative to the Toyota Supra and Civic Type Rs of the world that is actually a absolute hooligan, like the old M2 CS. The brand’s best cars can make easy work of both a daily commute and a track day.
In that context, this M3 is the most BMW BMW, the purist distillation of what makes this brand great.
Give Us Some Specs on the 2025 M3
For 2025, the M3 sedan comes in two flavours: Competition and, err, regular. Where the former gets all-wheel drive, the latter is strictly rear-wheel drive. Both have the same 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged straight-six engine, and it’s one of the GOATs.
Here, the straight-six pumps out 473 horsepower and 406 lb-ft of torque. Acceleration from 0-100 km/h is a rather ordinary 4.2 seconds, at least on paper. In contrast, the M3 Competition makes 523 hp and 479 lb-ft of torque. But, drivers can’t get the 6-speed manual on the Competition model; it’s only available on this base M3. And the 6-speed manual is a big part of what makes this car so engaging and entertaining over the long run.
What’s the Price in Canada of the 2025 M3?
Opting for the base model M3 will save you some money, but the 2025 model isn’t exactly inexpensive. It starts at $97,178. With the $4,000 premium package, plus the $5,000 BMW Individual paint in (glorious!) Dakar Yellow II, $750 M Compound brakes and a $750 set of 19- and 20-inch alloys, the total came out to $102,750 for our test car.
That’s still less expensive than the M3 Competition, which for 2025 starts at $105,614 in Canada.
What’s It Like to Drive?
Like I said, it’s the most BMW BMW, the purest distillation yet of what the firm is all about. To that end, yes, the cabin is bathed in high-quality materials, all soft to the touch and nicely put together so there aren’t any rattles or squeaks. The black Merino leather and dark graphite trim gives the cabin a very serious, all-business sort of vibe. (We’d like a bit more colour in the cabin, but thankfully BMW’s options list delivers.)
The standard seats are more comfortable than the carbon buckets while still providing plenty of support for the sort of driving you’re likely to do in an M3.
Our only major interior gripe is that the new widescreen display looks as if it was just plopped on top of the M3’s old dashboard. That, and the red stitching on the steering wheel at 12 o’clock is slightly wonky and not as well done as on higher-end machinery. It looks race-y but would be better without it.
With adaptive M suspension fitted as standard, ride comfort is what I would call acceptable. The beautiful 19/20-inch alloys leave a good amount of tire sidewall, thankfully. The ride is just on the right side of being too-firm for daily use, at least in downtown Toronto. Of course, your mileage may vary.
With rear-drive and a tidal wave of torque always available, the M3 always feels lively and responsive. It’s always ready to smear the back tires across the tarmac, but don’t mistake it for a blunt instrument. There’s real balance and precision to the handling, even at the limit. You can effectively measure out the exact angle of your next lurid powerslide. While the steering doesn’t offer the kind of fine-grained feedback you get in a Porsche GT3 (which is double the price and only has two doors) the M3 does still offer enough feel to be highly entertaining both on the road and track, especially when you throw in that 6-speed manual gearbox. It keeps a driver busy. On a racetrack, it won’t be the fastest car there, but it could certainly be the most fun.
And there you have it, the best BMW is the basic, standard, regular M3 with rear-drive and a good old 6-speed manual. Sometimes, less is more.
