[CityLife]

It may look similar to Audi with some minor adjustments, like removing the middle line, but it doesn't look anywhere near as nice. I am not a big fan of Audi as it looks rather plain, but what BMW has done here I wouldn't say it is boring, it is very much in your face, and not in a good way. The angles of the grill look incredibly awkward, the renders appeared significantly better and less rounded on the edges. This reminds me more of the Guilia in the sense that there is this very awkward eye sore in the middle of the car that people can not look past.

I decided to survey a handful of friends today, and sent them pictures of the latest mules that appear awaiting to be shipped somewhere. I did not say anything about my own opinions and simply asked them what they thought. They vary from people who don't know much about cars to knowing a decent amount, but not so much that they have seen these pictures yet or know exactly when a new M3 is being released. These people all have mentioned they really like the F80 M3 in the past.

The consensus ranged from female friends saying "ewww", and the reasoning was that it just looked like it was trying to do too much. I tried to get them to say why, and they wouldn't point directly to the grill being the reason, they gave no reason other than this.

The guys that were asked the same, and mentioned the car still has very BMW lines, the grill came up more with them, one said the grill initially is a bit odd, but is now neutral on the grill design, he didn't notice too many other radical changes from the prior model. Some said they were initially shocked, but kinda dig it. One responded w only "uhh butt cheeks". There were a couple of other responses that were more of what you are getting on this forum from the guys.

I am curious what non forum members think of the grill, to me based on social media and just asking a handful of friends, the grill is not as big of a deal to them, but they also aren't going to be spending $75-95K for a car anytime soon either. I think if you are going to be spending a significant amount of money on a new car, you can't be neutral about the way it looks, you have to love it. I have not seen many people say they absolutely love the design, a large majority of the people either dont like the grill or think they will learn to live with it. This just does not seem like the precursor to a successful vehicle launch.