The 2020 BMW 1 Series: What Was BMW Thinking?

BMW’s recent range has sparked a sort of marmite debate, you either love it or you hate it, let me put it into perspective for you. The new grille design makes the front of the BMW range look like a boar or one of the green pigs from Angry Birds, still, they’ve been bold enough to develop that concept or compensate its large grille for something else?

That being said the new BMW 1 series, set to release in 2020, to falls victim to that hideous looking front grille; though what’s truly hideous is how the all-new 1 series is front wheel drive. What the hell was BMW thinking? The majority of its components are taken from the MINI Countryman and the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer, and BMW has fitted the 1 series with something called Contiguous Wheel Slip Limitation to make the car feel sporty and as a “1 series should”. Which I think is just a load of bollocks, “Ultimate Driving Machine” my ass.

Right, that’s the ranting out of the way, for now, but why oh why would BMW remove the only rear-wheel drive hatchback that truly made driving fun? You might as well remove the BMW badge and put a Mini badge on it instead, cause quite frankly that’s essentially what the 2020 1 Series will be. The looks for starters are as follows: it’s too tall for it is, the car looks fat and lazy, sure there’s a clever front differential and the sporty M135i variant will come with X-drive (would’ve been better if they put X-drive on the last generation M140i but I digress) and between me and you, I lowkey think that BMW tried to mimic the looks of the Mercedes A35 AMG with that silly carbon fibre wing on the back. Let’s get this straight, a wing is supposed to provide downforce, right? Yes, so why would you need a wing on the back of a car that is predominately front wheel drive biased…

If you were hoping that the engine options would still remain the same, well I might as well spoil your hopes now otherwise we’re both going to need tissues, Chinese takeaway and a rebound to deal with the breakup. The legendary 3-litre straight 6-cylinder engine is now non-existent on the 2020 BMW M135i, what you have instead is a throaty and rather disappointing 2-litre engine. Which BMW claims is the most powerful four-cylinder engine they’ve ever built, which is the same as saying that Ebola is the most lethal of all the tropical diseases, its still a pathetic 2-litre engine and they’ll probably play some artificial engine sounds into the cockpit. Despite all the negativity, the 2-litre engine will produce a decent 306bhp and 450Nm of torque, and the added benefit of X-drive will at least make the car feel more planted on the road and less tail happy. The other lower tier engines both petrol and diesel variants will be the exact same ones used in the MINI and 2 Series BMW.

Now to sum up, I’m not hating on BMW, the 8 series and the M8 set to release later this year is probably going to be one of the best gran tourers available on the market, the BMW M5 and the M3 are one of the ultimate sports saloons you can currently get on the market, the M2 Competition Pack, in my opinion, is one of the best sports coupes that has ever been built. But the new 1 series, the X7 and the 7 Series are utter crap and disappointments. From a brand that has given us some of the world’s truly most spectacular cars over the past 50 years, it is just heart-breaking to see them ruining cars which we’ve grown up with, cars that we’ve established a bond with and cars that we’ve grown to respect only to see them get taken away and converted into the docile creatures we’ve always known BMWs were never meant to be.