We Want BMW’s April Fools' Jokes To Be Real Things

It’s starting to feel like every year, car companies are using April Fools’ Day as an excuse to dangle an enthusiast-friendly carrot in front of us, only to throw their hands up and say ‘Sorry guys, just a prank!’

Last year, we had VW teasing the return of its beloved multicoloured Harlequin special editions, only for the gig to be blown wide open on 1 April. Back in 2019, there was the time Hyundai showed off a fantastic-looking N-badged two-seater roadster, announcing it as a new model before quickly saying ‘psych’.

This year, it’s BMW’s M division that’s toying with enthusiasts, hitting us with a two-for-one deal of April Fools’ Day pranks we wish were real things across its social channels.

Firstly, on the main M Instagram account, there’s the ‘announcement’ of an M2 Dakar. Following in the footsteps of cars like the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato and Porsche 911 Dakar, it’s a suspension-lifted, wide-bodied M2 complete with underbody cladding, knobbly tyres and a roof rack full of off-road goodies.

We can only hope BMW’s secretly using April Fools’ Day as an excuse to gauge the public response to something like this. The M2 Dakar looks like an absolute riot and would feel right at home among the current batch of Safari-fied sports cars.

Then, over on the Instagram channel dedicated to M’s motorsport exploits is a series of renderings of a GT3 racing version of the M3 Touring. Would it be competitive? Is there any real point to it? Would it even meet GT3 racing regulations? The answer to all of these questions is almost certainly ‘no’, but we still can’t help wishing it was real so it could join the pantheon of great racing wagons along with the Volvo 850 Estate BTCC and, erm… well, that Volvo's pretty cool.

We’re not sure whether these renders have been cooked up by proper designers or spat out by some sort of AI image generator, but either way, we’re sad that renders are all they are. This should serve as the latest salutary lesson to car companies thinking about teasing us with a cool project that they have no intention of building every time April rolls around. BMW, the only way you can redeem yourself is to actually make them. Especially that M2.