Klasse Act: why the BMW i3 is our 2026 Genius Awards Car of the Year
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BMW’s much-vaunted Neue Klasse project seemed, for a long while, to be little more than marketing speak. We had to wait five years for those two words to really mean anything. Then, finally, the new iX3 launched – and it silenced the doubters. Bold but much cleaner in its exterior design than most of BMW’s output over recent years, the SUV arrived stuffed with technology to set it apart from the class norm, pushing the boundaries of mainstream electric driving range at a lower price point than Munich’s previous-generation EVs. Then we drove it and struggled to remember ever having come away from an electric family SUV quite so enthused.
Job done, then? Not so fast. The big question still needed an answer: could the Neue Klasse create an electric 3-series worthy of a brilliant bloodline; a lineage that’s given us such meisterwerke as the versatile, aspirational E30 and the refined, effortlessly excellent E46?
Coming hot on the heels of the iX3, the i3 would be the significantly more challenging car. The 3-series is both BMW’s centre of gravity and the embodiment of everything CAR values: driving fun, charm, capability, technology and performance. For more than 50 years the 3-series has (mostly) been all the car we could ever need and want. Could the i3 possibly deliver more of the same without an engine?