BMW M Boss Says “iM3” Isn’t Happening

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Recent reports that BMW had trademarked the ‘iM3’ name have been getting marque fans both excited and mad in equal measure, but M division’s boss this week played down speculation, claiming that the M3 badge would never find itself conjoined with the ‘i’ BMW uses on its other EVs.

‘We would never use an i on an M, even though it would be electric,” M CEO Van Meel told Top Gear at the magazine’s awards ceremony this week. “Because an M3 had a four-cylinder, six-cylinder, eight-cylinder engine; naturally aspirated, turbocharged ones. Now it’s even got an xDrive, but it always remained an M3.”

But saying that an iM3 will never happen isn’t the same thing as saying BMW will never make a successor to the M3 powered by batteries. It simply means that the M3 brand is so strong that it will be carried forward in the same way it has existed for the past 38 years. And because the EV will be available concurrently with today’s ICE M3, we imagine it will have some kind of secondary badge, a bit like BMW uses Competition to mark out the hotter versions today, or xDrive to signify all-wheel drive.

Related: 2027 Electric BMW M3 May Include A Twin-Motor, Rear-Wheel Drive Version

“If we would ever do something like [an electric M3], it will always be called an M without an i,” van Meel continued, without explaining to Top Gear‘s reporter why BMW had registered the ‘iM3’ trademark with German regulators. “Because that’s just the technology, and M is not about technology. It’s about a promise, it’s about motorsports, it’s about emotion. It’s not about the drivetrain.”

Recent reports suggested the still secret electric M3, which will be based on BMW’s Neue Klasse platform and so is still several years away from production, could theoretically have as much as 1,341 hp (1 megawatt / 1,360 PS) courtesy of a quad-motor drivetrain. A twin-motor version for rear-wheel drive fans is also under consideration, van Meel previously claimed.