The 2023 BMW M3 Competition xDrive is an //M Car Masterpiece (POV Drive Review)
The car is taken on this new energy that is fully immersive. Hey crew. I got the key to that 23 BMW M3 Competition xDrive Edition 50 Jahre, which means 50 years in German if I had said that right. Anyway, we are gonna take it for a drive, but first let’s check out how it looks on the inside and outside. For the 23 model year there are some changes, but they happen on the interior so we’ll kind of just touch on the stuff that’s unique for the Edition 50, including this 50 years of BMW M Badge.
We still have the gloss black controversial grille. We’ve got projector LED headlights with BMW’s laser light technology, including LED DRLs and turn signals. Below those are air curtains on the side. You get a carbon fiber front splitter and lots of functional cooling. The paint job on this is called Fire Orange and it’s one of five callback colors on the Edition 50 from previous generation M3s. This one coming from the E92 Lime Rock Park Edition. At the side we get 19-inch front, 20-inch rear forged alloy wheels. It’s in the same design as the M3 Comp but
with a dark gray finish. And those wheels are wrapped in Pirelli P Zero tires. 275 section front and 285 at the rear. You get
more than I do the face, though. It’s not just that grille. Just never really grew on me, the design. At the back are LED taillights and turn signals. We get a carbon fiber lip spoiler and a black gloss diffuser with four giant exhaust outlets each capped in carbon fiber on the Edition 50. Overall, you gotta look closely to find the Edition 50 touches. But when you see a paint job like this, you’ll know it’s just one of 500 cars. And what do you guys think? Is this better or worse looking than an Audi RS5 Competition
Sportback? Let me know in the comments and let’s check out the interior. Opening up and looking inside at this black full Marino leather interior that’s standard on the Edition 50 as are the tricolor stitched headrests with suede borders. Tricolor on the seat belts. That’s standard M3 and then perforations on the seats. Injection molding up high in the doors. We move into leather with contrast stitching. Nicely padded armrest armrest. We have some ambient lighting that shows up here at night. Harman/Kardon sound system. One-touch up-down windows. More injection molding down low and a big cup holder. Stepping
in, very easy to do. Behind my own seat at 6 feet tall, I’ve got plenty of knee room behind these awesome, optional full carbon buckets where if your driver is bothering you, you can just poke ’em. Big foot pockets to slide my feet under. Thigh support is good and headroom is sufficient. Head just barely clears the roof, but it gets the thumbs up from me. There are two air vents in the middle, a third zone of climate, and two USB-C ports. Big drive shaft hump there that you have to overcome if you wanna get into
the middle, but my head does clear the roof. If you don’t have a middle passenger, there’s no armrest that comes down and these rear seats are not heated. Those are really my only critiques though. Let’s check out the front. Door close noise? Ooh, interesting. The thud is right, but it’s awfully loud. Smart keyless entry is for the front and back doors. Here’s a better look at those sport bucket seats with the grab handles and just immense bolsters there. These side bolsters are power adjusting. The seats themselves are power adjusting. We have your poke holes, suede
wrapping, contrast stitching in blue. We have more tricolor stitching on the headrest here. Pass-throughs for your racing harness. You get Edition 50 tread plates. Aluminum accenting for the foot pedals. Same materials on the front doors as the back. Four one-touch windows. Power adjusting and power folding door mirrors. Two position memory for those front seats. Press this down to lift up the trunk lid and find 13 cubic feet of space. And you can expand that by pulling on these two tabs and folding the seats down 40/20/40. There is a Power Close and Lock feature on the
trunk lid. And getting into these seats, while they look amazing, is a pain in the butt. So you gotta lower yourself and try not to split your business, gentlemen, and we’ll close up this door. And see the drivers have this thickly wrapped, tricolor stitched, heated leather steering wheel, feels great in the hands. There’s carbon fiber on the wheel. We have your two M buttons in red. Carbon fiber faced paddles that are nice and large with texturing on the back. And the big change for 23 is this new curved glass display encompassing your digital instrument cluster
with updated graphics and your 14-inch touchscreen running the new iDrive 8 software. It’s visually compelling, it’s responsive, it’s easy to navigate and it has wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Below the screen is some gloss carbon fiber. And BMW moved almost all of the climate control settings into the infotainment system, but they retained the physical volume. There’s gloss carbon here with the Edition 50 number plated badge. Under that is a wireless smartphone charging pad. You get two cup holders, a USB-A port, and a DC outlet. More gloss carbon fiber around your leather-wrapped and tricolor stitched
gear selector. Under the leather-wrapped console we’ve got a decent amount of storage and a USB-C port. Visibility…is stellar with those folding rear headrests and we’ve got standard blind spot monitoring with rear cross traffic. Overall, I’m kind of surprised on the special edition you have to pay extra for these full carbon seats. And the Edition 50 touches are mostly just badges. But if you want that little bit of extra rarity, then BMW’s got you covered. Let’s take the M3 Competition xDrive for a drive next. All right, let’s fire it up. It is a punchy and yet
dignified startup. If I hit the Setup button here, we can review that our engine, chassis, steering and braking are all in their mildest configuration and the all-wheel drive system is indeed powering all four tires. Click over and up to go into Reverse. That brings up a high resolution camera system. We got our backup view with trajectory lines. We’ve got the bird’s eye view. If we hit this, then we can work around the exterior in 3D and see that this car is in the same Fire Orange as our vehicle. Nice continuity, BMW. And then I’ll hit
the backup assist, which will allow the vehicle to back up in the same path that we used to get into the space. So I can just operate the gas and brake and not worry about the steering. It’s over into Drive. And we’ll start things off as usual with a turning radius test. I’ll bring up that camera system one more time. And fully cranked here. We’ve got an audience today. That turn was not incredibly concise, but passable. Turn signal sound? Pleasant. I don’t mind that at all. And the world famous horn test. Huh. Sounds a little
elitist. Like the other cars on the road are beneath this M3. Powertrain. We’ve got a 3-Liter twin-turbocharged inline-6 that in the base M3 makes 473 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque but in the Competition spec adds 30 horsepower and a whopping 73 pound-feet for totals of 503 and 479 respectively. If you want that extra power, or you want all-wheel drive, then you’re going to have to give up the available 6-speed manual in the base M3 and go with this 8-speed automatic that is a fluid unit. The brake pedal in the Comfort setting is not too
grabby. You can easily come up to a stop. And the throttle response, in Efficient engine is never dim or dull, but it is smooth. The ride quality, however, is never smooth or comfortable. This is a firm sports sedan and you jostle over every bump. You feel every imperfection traveling through the seat, and furthermore, you hear every groove or rut in the road through those tires. It’s not luxury. It is definitely airing on the side of performance. The seats, bear that they are to get into, are not terribly uncomfortable. With the adjustable side bolsters, you can
find a seating for your body type. I don’t think you could sit in these for a long period of time and stay fresh, but short distances, a 30 minute commute, no issues. But I’m, I’m just itching to uncork all of the power we have at our disposal so let’s do a real world 0-60 test next. So with my race box setup here, I need to go into Manual mode and turn traction and stability control fully off. Or I could just have those pre-programmed into one of my M buttons as I’ve done so here. Then for
launch, I hold my foot hard on the brake while pinning the throttle, letting it build up and then releasing my foot from the brake. Here it goes. Oh, my! 3.3 seconds to 60. That was a violent launch. I can’t even say-that was a violent launch. I’ve seen quicker personally, which is what’s crazy. And the M4 Competition xDrive I drove did it in 3.1. Now, while staying in Manual mode. It’s a great gear box. The shifts are quick. The action on these mighty meaty paddles is fantastic. And the roll on the upshift is wonderful. This car
is an animal in a straight line. Absolutely mental. I know the noise is enhanced through the sound system. I don’t care because it’s borrowed from a natural soundtrack from the twin-turbo inline 6-cylinder, so I can forgive it. Let’s go out of Manual. Out of M1. Back into the Efficient and Comfort calibrations, and just listen in for the NVH. Here, the build quality of the M3 kind of shines through because it stays pretty quiet, not a ton of wind noise. The tire noise has distilled somewhat compared to on the undulating road surface at low speeds. It,
it settles in at speed. I, I think it’s probably built for the German Autobahn so that makes sense. But straight line is only half of the M3 Competition xDrive equation. Let’s take this car to a good road and see how it handles. All right, before we get into the canyon driving, let’s hit the Setup button and make some changes here. We’ll make the engine in Sport+. Chassis, we’ll go Sport. Steering and braking in Sport and we won’t do anything to the all-wheel drive system just yet. I’m also going to hit the M mode button, which
will focus up the gauge cluster, having the tachometer there highlighted. And away we go. I did neglect one important detail and that is to increase the shift logic here to 3, so this transmission will hold onto gears for longer. Right away, the thing that jumps out to me is the added heft to the steering and the urgency of the throttle response. Now, the added weight of the steering can sometimes reduce your sense of feel, but not here in the M3. It works with a rack that builds resistance in a very natural way so you have
an excellent sense of grip. Brakes bite nicely before each corner. And the power just swells out of curves. On these longer sweepers, I have zero sense of understeer from the all-wheel drive system. Oh, it all just feels so dialed. Between the corners, you get up to some serious speed. Wonderful rhythm and playfulness. Strong braking performance there. And unless you were on a canyon road all day or hitting up a track, you shouldn’t really need the carbon ceramic brakes. I like that engine note more as I hear it. Loving the composure of this car. It just
wills you to push it a bit harder and satisfy that curiosity. With the gearbox keeping us in the upper part of the rev range, there’s just zero latency from that turbocharged powertrain. Now, to see if there’s a discernible difference in dynamics, I’m going into the M2 mode, which for me, means everything is in max attack and the all-wheel drive system is in Sport, equating to more rear bias. I’ve got the transmission in Manual and the traction control system, that’s off. Well, right away, the chassis just feels like it’s on the tip of its toes. The
turn in is instant. And the car is taken on this new energy that is fully immersive. Gosh, this engine pulls so hard. Wow. It doesn’t yield. It just keeps tearing forward. I cannot but just go: Has M lost even an ounce of its engineering prowess? If so, I feel none of that from behind the wheel of this car. And that is a lovely segue into our Miles Per Hour word of the day, which for the M3 Competition xDrive is Meticulous, meaning involving great care and effort. That is the takeaway from driving this vehicle, that it
was developed with this precision, this laser focus on a rewarding drive. It’s palpable the effort put into its development. And we will discuss pricing and competition momentarily but first, the fuel economy of the M3 Competition xDrive is 16 MPG in the city, 22 highway and 18 combined. Though in my experience, I never got close to 18. Best I did was 17, driven remarkably modestly. The top speed, that’s not modest, it’s 180 miles per hour. The starting figure of the M3, the base car, is about $75,000 bucks. Hey, NA Miata. Love you. If you want the
Competition model, budget an additional $2,400. If you want the xDrive Competition, then it’s just under 82 grand and if you want the, I’m gonna say it one more time Jahre Edition 50, then it’s $96,700 minimum. This car as tested is $101,000 bucks. And now for the competitors. We’ve got the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio which starts at just under $82,000 bucks. It makes 505 horsepower. It gets to 60 in 3.8 seconds and it has the top speed of 191 miles per hour. Then we’ve got the Audi RS5 Sportback Competition model, which is new and just under
$94,000. It makes 444 horsepower. Gets to 60 in 3.5 seconds and has the top speed tying this of 180 miles per hour. Finally, the Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing, which starts at the cheapest $62,000 bucks. It makes 472 horsepower. Like the M3, it can be equipped with the 6-speed manual. And it gets to 60 in 3.9 seconds with a top speed of 189 miles per hour. Out the gates, I’ll say that if you’re on a bit of a budget, that CT4-V Blackwing will not leave you wanting. It is so good dynamically. Stylistically, and in terms of cabin
space, leaves a little bit to be desired though. But if you have more money to spend, then your decision should be between this and the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quad and I’m gonna rule out the Edition 50. I understand if you’re obsessed with one of those 5 available colors. For me, it would be the Ultra Violet. It’s just such a cool color. And if you want the rarity of having one of 500, okay, fine, but let’s just call it the M3 Competition xDrive, the standard car. Both the Giulia Quad and the M3 Comp xDrive are not
perfect. They have their little flaws. For the Giulia it’s probably the technology and the lack of pizzazz for the interior. And for the M3 Comp, it’s the face and this harsh ride quality day in and day out. I would just choose the one that I woke up and loved that day. They’re that close. They’re that incredibly good and rewarding to drive. I’m curious which you would choose. Would you go this? Would you go Alfa Romeo Giulia Quad? Would you go CT4-V Blackwing and save the money or Audi RS5 Sportback Competition? Let me know in the
comments. And I hope you guys have enjoyed this POV drive review. If you did, please like, comment and share the video. Subscribe to the channel, hit that bell to get notified and I’ll see you next time. Captions by Nicosubs.
