BMW promised us front-wheel drive and here it is: the car that undoes 85 years of brand positioning by leaving the rear wheels undriven.
The 2 Series Active Tourer further tramples on the form book by also being a practical people carrier and becoming the first mainstream BMW to use the 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbo engine first seen in the i8 hybrid supercar and the new Mini hatchback. In fact it shares far more with the Mini that it does with the 2 Series coupe with which it shares a name.
Marketing folk off to do some 'urban gardening'
The advertising is based on the premise that active family types who enjoy mountain biking and, er, guerilla gardening want three boxes ticked: space, small footprint and a sporty drive. But roominess in a car 4.4 metres long can only be achieved by fitting transverse engines, according to BMW, who reckons the Active Tourer has an "unprecedented feeling of spaciousness".
The new engines available when the car goes on sale in September are all built from the same modular family where 500cc equals one cylinder. So alongside the 136hp 1.5 218i three-cylinder, likely to be the cheapest from around £23,000, there's a 150hp 2.0-litre diesel called the 218d.
In November we'll also get a 231hp 2.0-litre turbo petrol badged 225i, which confuses things by sending some of the power to the rear wheels via a version of BMW's xDrive system. The dimensions of the Active Tourer are very similar to those of its main rival, the Mercedes B-Class, a car which become impossible for BMW to ignore after it carved itself a huge market in Europe.
Looks like a BMW, will it still drive like one?
Last year the B-Class sold just shy of 100,000 in the region, not far behind the 107,000 BMW shifted of the 5 Series. Which means the Active Tourer has the potential to overtake it and become BMW's third best-selling model in Europe after the
3 Series
and 1 Series. Mind-boggling stuff.
This won't be the only front-drive model either, BMW has hinted. But is that a bad thing? We're promised that from behind the wheel of the Active Tourer, you won't notice a dilution of the sports heritage. High-tensile steel grades are used to make the body stiff, and weight saving including using alumimum for the bonnet cuts the kilos. The Active Tourer does seem impressively light – the 1.5-litre car weighs just 1,320kg for example, which is less than a three-door 1 Series.
We're interested to hear what you guys think. The world didn't stop spinning on its axis when the car was revealed in pics on Friday, and Porsche for one has shown you can still moonlight away from your brand core as long as the extra cash is still being ploughed back into truly desirable cars. But it's a long way from a V8 SUV to a frugal, front-wheel-drive people carrier. Once again we're wondering, is this a niche too far?