Starts at $76,000
Rank
FAST FACTS
"BMW's iconic compact sport sedan continues to provide daily-driver livability alongside its prodigious performance. It also continues to offer a manual transmission, which will endear it to purists who remember when the manual was a must-have M3 feature. Some may feel that today's M3 suffers from tech overload and lacks the passion of earlier models — and that's fair — but there's no denying the clinical precision of this machine. Nonetheless, we rate the 'lesser' M340i higher still because it's a better value and arguably a more well-rounded car."—Ranked #1 out of 5 Compact High-Performance Sedans
Publisher and Donkey-in-Chief
Josh has been reviewing cars professionally since joining Edmunds.com fresh out of grad school in 2008, personally driving most new cars on the market every year since. He also served as the project manager for Edmunds' expert vehicle rankings from their inception in 2018, building the product out from the back end to the front end. Josh is a card-carrying member of the Motor Press Guild and a lifelong car nut who has tested, compared and critiqued a ridiculous number of cars in his career.
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