BMW’s New M350 Wears i3 Looks Over A Straight-Six That Could Clear 400 HP

The new i3 electric sedan was the first low-slung model to adopt the Neue Klasse styling language after the iX3 SUV, but it won’t be the only BMW working this segment. Joining it is a new generation of the combustion-powered 3-Series, codenamed G50, expected to arrive later this year.

Our spy photographers have been catching prototypes of the next 3-Series since late 2025, but this latest sighting gives up far more. What we’re looking at is the M350 performance variant, as evidenced by the quad exhausts, chunky wheels, and aero hardware.

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BMW has stripped the heavy camouflage off the bumpers, giving us the clearest view yet of the aggressive cooling intakes. Those sit below i3-style headlights linked by the slimmer kidney grille. In profile, the car keeps a familiar greenhouse with the Hofmeister kink, though the door handles now sit flush with the bodywork. This M350 prototype also appears to wear production LED taillights, along with the usual M Performance body kit and its reworked bumpers, side skirts, rear diffuser, and lip spoiler.

Despite the similar dimensions and shared styling cues, the 3-Series has no mechanical relationship to the i3. Rather than riding on the Neue Klasse architecture, it stays rooted in the current combustion model’s CLAR underpinnings, now with a round of improvements.

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In other words, the new G50 amounts to a heavily updated take on the current G20 3-Series, which has been around since late 2018 with a facelift in 2022 and a milder revision in 2024. That’s hardly bad news for BMW fans, since it means the car keeps the same sexy proportions.

One of the biggest knocks against the Neue Klasse i3 was that its dash-to-axle ratio and rear volume came up shorter than usual. The gas 3-Series fixes that with a longer hood, a more upright windshield, and a greater rear overhang, giving it the look of a traditional RWD sedan.

Neue Klasse Tech Moves Inside

Inside, the new 3 will almost certainly lift the Neue Klasse tech wholesale from the i3, meaning the 17.9-inch infotainment, the pillar-to-pillar lower windshield display, the optional 3D head-up unit, the configurable ambient lighting, and the four-spoke steering wheel all carry over.

Engines And Trims

Like the car it replaces, the next 3-Series stays available with gasoline, diesel, mild-hybrid, and plug-in hybrid power in rear-drive and xDrive all-wheel-drive forms. North America starts with the 330 and its 2.0-liter turbocharged inline-four making around 260 hp, with headroom for more if BMW massages the B48.

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Then there’s the sporty M350 shown here, running a hotter take on today’s B58 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six that reportedly clears 400 horsepower, up from the current M340’s 386 hp in North American trim. Whether BMW fields both rear-drive and xDrive versions or commits to all-wheel drive alone this time remains an open question, though the eight-speed automatic almost certainly arrives as standard. The fate of the M340d in the next generation stays just as murky.

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Crowning the range will be a combustion-powered M3 carrying a mild-hybrid twin-turbo 3.0-liter six, though that performance flagship lands later in the product cycle.

When It Arrives

BMW hasn’t officially locked in a launch date for the new G50 3-Series, but it could surface before the end of 2026 as production reportedly kicks off in November 2026. Whether the premium compact sedan reaches US dealers in time for the 2027 model year is still up in the air. A Touring version for both the i3 and the new gas 3-Series has also been confirmed. BMW opened the door to more wagons in the States following the success of the M5 Touring, but its arrival still isn’t certain and could end up limited to the M3 on this side of the pond.

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