The BMW M2 Racing is Missing Something Under The Hood

BMW wants you to take its new M2 racing, but motor sports is a very expensive endeavor. To help reduce the cost, the automaker made some cuts to its new M2 Racing customer car. By, “cuts” I mean to the engine bay. If you look under the M2 Racing’s hood you won’t find the 473 horsepower 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six engine which powers its road car counterpart. Instead, the BMW M team has given the M2 Racing the B48 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine.

The B48 engine can be found in BMW 330i and other BMW products like the JCW Mini. It’s no slouch either, making 313 horsepower and 310 ft-lbs of torque. BMW went this route to keep costs low as the M2 Racing is intended to be an “entry-level” customer race car rather than something that would be at the heart of a multi-million-dollar GT3 program.

Speaking of cost, the price tag of the M2 Racing is relatively low compared to other factory customer race cars. If you have the itch to go racing but can’t drop seven-figures on a race car, the M2 Racing can be had for about $112,000 (net). There are additional options like a rear wing, air jack system, MoTec data logger, and a passenger seat but like with any BMW those options will cost extra.

The BMW M2 Racing should be eligible to race in various entry level racing series across the world with little to no modifications required, though you may want to check with your intended series just to be sure.

At over $100k the M2 Racing isn’t the cheapest entry level customer race car. For example a brand new Mazda MX-5 Cup Car is approximately $40k cheaper. Though the M2 Racing has more tech, is more powerful, and well the allure of racing a factory BMW. That’s hard to beat even for a legendary race car like the MX-5 Cup.

Is it a bit of a bummer that the M2 Racing gets a smaller engine than its street legal variant? Sure, but I doubt very many customers will be thinking about that once their behind the wheel of their BMW racer.