[hotsoup]

The 3-series/M3 has always been known for spartan interiors - they're pretty much generally regarded as the worst interior of their class, though it's not my personal opinion. It's a budget sports car for people who value the BMW power train and chase some kind of highly-subjective, ill-defined, over-marketed notion of "Freude am Fahren" that reverberates the echo-chambers of MotorTrend and BMW forums everywhere.

You should not be:

1) thinking that what you're seeing here is a fully-optioned out interior,

2) comparing the (what is most likely the base) interior to that of up-market cars like the 5/6/7-series,

3) expecting luxury details standard; if you want value, you're shopping the wrong brand - you're paying a premium for the badge and the engine.

4) expecting a jump in interior standards from the outgoing M3. They are trying to keep the same price point or even under if accounting for inflation. Interior at best will be a slight improvement, at worst the same level. The outgoing E9X interior looks disgustingly dated, and incoming model looks like it'll have some cheap-looking plastic "chrome" trim. Big deal, not really that big of a quality difference to start whining about it, especially when you can just option it out.

Edit: People shopping the $60-80K tier should really be dialing down their expectations. I know mine, and I know I'll only now be satisfied at the 100-120K level (where BMW's offerings are truly pathetic), hence this will unfortunately most likely be my first and last BMW.