For the moment, though, the M3 is rear-wheel drive, which is why it has an M Drift Analyser, which will give you a star rating out of five for how well you’ve done your sliding – based on distance travelled sideways and the angle of your dangle, not including the number of lamp-posts you take out while failing to gather it up on the exit of a roundabout.
You don’t have to be in a drifty setting, by the way. There are Road and Track driving modes and you can configure the engine, gearbox, steering, damper and even brake- pedal responses individually through the infotainment system to Comfort, Sport and, for some characteristics, Sport Plus levels – and store your two favourite combinations on steering- wheel-mounted shortcut levers.
Doing all this is much easier than with some rivals’ systems, and the whole iDrive set-up is great – a mix of touchscreen and rotary dial, with supplementary buttons on the centre console and a whole load of other normal buttons on the dashboard, some of which are configurable. This might just be the best in the business.
The rest of the interior seems as swishly put together and is similarly functional, with a brilliantly adjustable driving position, a round (if overly thick) steering wheel and clear digital instruments.
Whatever you do, though, don’t spec the optional M Carbon Bucket Seats (in a £3400 pack with some other options), with their curious raised insert between your thighs. In single-seat or very serious racing cars, seats shaped like this, even more exaggerated, make sense: they keep your legs in place under high cornering loads and prevent them from flailing in a crash. In a road car, what appears to be some kind of carbonfibre penis tray looks daft and is plain obstructive.
How does the M3 Competition perform on the road?
There’s a slight error on BMW’s online M3 configurator, too: a detail picture shows the car with a manual gearbox. Not on the Competition model, so not in the UK, where the only gearbox is an eight-speed regular torque-converter automatic, rather than a dual-clutch (DCT) unit, driving via an electronically controlled limited-slip differential.
