2025 BMW M3

Pros

• Rapid speeding up.
• It has sporty handling and a number of driver-set choices.
• The back seat and trunk are both very big.

Cons

• It’s less fun to drive when the driving feels wrong.
• A lot of wind noise.
• It’s hard to find love for front-end style.

What gives the M3 its power? The BMW M3 Competition xDrive was looked at. It moves quickly. In our tests, it only took 3.2 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph, which was much faster than the Audi RS 5 Sportback and Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing. The transmission might not want to downshift even when it is in Sport mode. Because of this, we suggest that you leave the gear in manual shift mode before you try to drive on some winding mountain roads.

Very good handling is used. The M3 Competition is a real racing sedan, so it has low roll-in turns and a lot of grips. This form of the M3 is one of the first to have all-wheel drive. Not only does it go faster when it snows, but it also gets a better grip. You can turn off all-wheel drive and send all the power to the back wheels if you still like tail-out tricks.

Unfortunately, BMW’s current steering calibration is still fine but not great. You can quickly control the car, and it doesn’t get harder to turn as you move away from the center line in Comfort mode. It is especially hard to tell right away where the wheels should be when turning back-to-back because of the lack of effort building. Because it has more weight, Sports mode is needed to move quickly.

How does the M3 make you feel? The ride quality of the M3 Competition isn’t as smooth as that of a similarly priced 7 Series, but it’s still good for its class. When in comfort mode, the adjustable dampers help keep the M3’s narrow tire walls and sport-tuned suspension from making the ride too rough. The optional carbon-fiber bucket seats came with our test car. These seats don’t have many changes, but they are still easy to set up for comfort. However, because of the carbon fiber piece in the middle of the seat, some drivers may have to spread their legs apart while driving.

This type of sports sedan has normal wind and road noise, but our writers don’t agree on how the engine’s exhaust sounds. Not everyone agrees on how great it sounds, especially from the outside. Some say it sounds like a symphony of blenders working hard and at full volume.

How is the inside? BMW cares a lot about the driver’s experience, and you can tell by the careful touches all over the M3. Some of the finishing touches are the center stack, tablet, and well-placed seats. It’s not hard to use, but if you want to take a pair of Venti cups home, you can’t get to your phone because the charging pad is right in front of the cupholders.

The inside of this small sedan is roomy, with a little more headroom than in similar cars. The M3’s big windshield pillars make it a little harder to see ahead, which is normal for cars in this class.

If you want to avoid using your M3 Competition as a real race car, you should not get the carbon-fiber sport bucket seats that came with our test car. The high-profile thigh bolsters make it hard to get in and out of the car, even though they provide soft padding.

What’s wrong with the tech? The M3 has the newest technologies that BMW has made for cars. The base model is one of the best navigation systems on the market, even though it changes traffic information way too often. You can use your phone to handle things in the M3 because it has wireless connectivity for both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It also has a good set of voice controls that you can use to change the radio station or type in an address. The music quality of the Harman Kardon system is amazing.

The M3 has several standard and optional driving assistance systems, such as adaptive cruise control, parking sensors, and blind-spot warning. It’s great how well BMW adjusts these features so they’re useful without being too sensitive overall.

What’s going on with storage? One thing that makes the M3 better than say, a Shelby GT500 or a Chevrolet Corvette is that it has a usable trunk and a back seat. The BMW sport sedan’s trunk can hold 13.0 cubic feet of things, which is a lot more than the CT4-V Blackwing’s 10.7 cubic feet. The hatchback Audi RS 5 Sportback, on the other hand, has almost 50% more room for cargo than the M3. There are many places to store things in the cabin, such as large door pockets and a bin that fits under your arm.

There is plenty of space in the back for a rear-facing car seat if you’re moving small children. The M3’s Isofix anchors are neatly placed under the flip-up lids.

How much fuel does it use? The EPA says that the M3 Competition xDrive will get 18 mpg on the highway and 16 mpg in the city. This is a little less than what the EPA says the Audi RS 5 and CT4-V Blackwing can do. Our test car, on the other hand, got an impressive 23.7 mpg on our 115-mile evaluation route. The Audi RS 5 got 22.7 mpg, and the CT4-V Blackwing got 20.4 mpg.

Is the M3 worth buying? The M3 starts at a little more than $70,000, but our Competition xDrive test car, which was matte gray and had all the speed bells and whistles checked, cost a lot more than that. The Cadillac CT4-V is a luxury performance car, so it makes sense that it costs tens of thousands of dollars less than an Audi RS 5 Sportback that has been customized. The Caddy is slower, though, and the inside isn’t as nice. Even though it’s expensive, the M3 is one of the best four-door cars on the market. It’s a BMW.

As is common in the business, BMW backs up both the engine and the bumper-to-bumper with a basic four-year/50,000-mile warranty. You will receive free upkeep for three years or until the end of your lease.

We won’t make any big changes to the M3’s bucktoothed face because everyone has a different taste. The rest of this sports sedan looks nice, and its wide tire arches and four exhaust pipes make it stand out from the famous 3 Series. It’s also a little hotter on the inside.

Then there are the M3 Comp’s specs: it has more than 500 horsepower, speeds up quickly, and turns very well. With the xDrive system, you can send all of the car’s power to the back tires. This means that picking AWD doesn’t mean giving computers and microchips full control.

The M3 Comp was hard to control because the steering was so weak. The sound of the fumes also let some of us down. It’s not quite “oh my gosh, go out and buy one now,” but it can do a lot. Also, stay away from the carbon bucket chairs. They will feel good on your partner, your legs, and your hips.

It’s fun to shift gears in the BMW M3, but the Competition model, which only has an automatic transmission, is the better choice. It goes faster, has an all-wheel drive for slippery roads, and lets the driver concentrate more on the job at hand. The automatic gearbox also makes it possible to make safety improvements in the future.

Different kinds of BMW M3

There are only three trim levels for the 2025 BMW M3: basic, Competition, and Competition xDrive. It is only offered as a small sedan. Each has a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder engine, but the power outputs and drivetrains are different:

The 473 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque from the base M3 are sent to the rear wheels by a six-speed manual gearbox. The M3 Competition has more power and speed (503 hp, 479 lb-ft), and it also comes with an eight-speed automatic gearbox as standard. The M3 Competition xDrive has a better grip because it has an all-wheel-drive system with a rear-wheel-drive arrangement and an eight-speed automatic gearbox. BMW made this model stronger by adding 523 horsepower and 479 lb-ft of torque for 2025.