BMW 135i CSL – or something quick?

The powerful BMW 1-Series spotted at the Nurburgring

We’ve had endless speculation that BMW are to produce an ‘M’ car for their baby 1-Series range. An argument for which is very strong. After all, if you can attach the ‘M’ moniker to a pair of fat SUVs – the X5M and X6M – attaching the ‘M’ badge to the 1-Series seems a no-brainer.

But there are two problems that keep raising their heads. The first is the M3. To make the rather bloated 1-Series perform as you would expect it to (it only weighs a few hundred pounds less than the 3-Series) you would have to give it similar power to the M3. Then you would end up with a cheap M3. Which may hurt M3 sales quite badly. So the most powerful 1-Series needs to be powerful, but perhaps not M3 powerful.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome is the name. We don’t believe that BMW would trash what supercar heritage they have by putting the M1 badge on a car that sits at the bottom of the BMW hierarchy, so we have to look for other ideas about what the most powerful 1-Series will be called, as it seems certain BMW will be putting some sort of halo power model at the top of the 1-Series range.

Badge rumours so far include M135i, 1M, 135i CSL, 135is and 135tii. All are perfectly possible and you can attach them to the picture at the top and the short video below. This seems to show a 1-Series with a wider track and carbon fibre roof and said to weigh in at 1,500 kg with 300bhp from a version of the N55 6-pot engine fettled by BMW’s M Division.

All of which makes sense. Just don’t expect it to be the BMW M1.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10898339[/vimeo]

By Cars UK