The most powerful BMW 3 Series you can buy (for now) has arrived in Singapore, with the M340i going for S$315,888 with COE

Text: Leow Ju-Len
Photos: BMW

SINGAPORE

Some tasty news from BMW Asia landed in our inbox today: the BMW M340i is now on sale in Singapore, at a price of S$315,888 including Certificate of Entitlement (COE). 

S$10,000 of that is for the taxman, courtesy of a pollution surcharge under the Vehicular Emissions Scheme (VES). 

Still, the rest buys a tasty car that is for now the fastest 3 Series around, and crucially the price puts the 374 horsepower machine comes under S$1,000-per-hp, a completely arbitrary metric that we use informally to judge the bang-per-buck value of cars. 

To use a more meaningful measurement of performance, the M340i blasts to 100km/h in just 4.4 seconds. At 250km/h the electronics put their foot down so you can’t go any faster even if you, er, put your foot down. 

The engine was breathed on by BMW M to liberate all 374hp from 3.0 litres, with torque peaking at 500 Newton-metres from a thick spread between just 1,850 and 5,000rpm. 

A low-inertia twin-scroll turbo, lightened and strengthened pistons and connecting rods, low-friction cylinder walls and a closed deck cylinder head that can withstand higher pressures are some of the technical highlights for the straight-six engine. 

Straight-six engine: powerful

A presumably boomy M Sport exhaust system comes standard with the car (and likely makes it sound like it had a lot of Mexican food for lunch, but in a good way), as do M Sport brakes, Adaptive M suspension and a rear M Sport differential. The latter features are there to keep the BMW properly tied down to the road, given the power, and so is an all-wheel drive system – the car’s full name is the M340i xDrive Sedan. 

Cosmetically you’ll be able to tell it apart from garden-variety 3 Series cars because of the mesh grilles, metallic wing mirror caps and trapezoidal tailpipes, and the various bits of bodykit around the car. Keep a beady eye peeled for the M rear spoiler, too, along with the M steering wheel, M pedals and M-specific doormats.

M Performance speakers have fast-moving cones that pump out optimised sound and M Sport wipers clear water from the windscreen 23 percent faster than regular wipers while raising the number of things marked “M” on the car by two. Only kidding about those, but you know they’re ideas that need to happen. 

Our man Ben put the M340i xDrive through its paces and judged it finely-balanced and pinpoint accurate. 

The more powerful (390hp) but slightly slower (0-100km/h in 4.7s) Mercedes-AMG C 43 is the obvious competition, but it’s serious competition. The Mercedes is an irrepressibly fun car to drive, to the extent that it nearly overshadows the bonkers C 63 S. 

Until the next M3 appears the M340i is BMW’s hero, but this is the sort of battle in which the main winners are keen drivers in general.