Is Kay Segler Saving The M-Series?

I was reading an interesting article in Car and Driver about Kay Segler, who has been in charge of the M Division at BMW for over a year. The BMW M-Series cars have always been popular among sports-car enthusiasts but over the last few years the M-series has seen a bit of a decline. Manual gearboxes disappointed buyers and a three-pedal manual also made the car difficult to drive.

Kay’s first car for BMW is the M3 GTS, an incredible sports car of which only 150 were made! However Segler’s second project which is yet to debut could be the run-away success that M needs, the M1. I’m not sure if they are actually going to call it the M1 but what I’m talking about here is the M version of the 1-series.

The car is expected to come-in at under $50,000 making it the most affordable M-series car available. One has to wonder if the day will ever come that BMW can get an M-series car in the 30K range – if they did that I think it would change the market forever. At $50K I think BMW hits the same market they have for years, only this time hopefully Kay Segler can get the formula right and bring the M-enthusiasts back to Bimmer.