The facelifted version of BMW’s brilliant M135i, which proved to be one of the real-world stars of the last few years. Along with Volkswagen’s Golf R the M135i became renowned for offering serious performance and involving dynamics at a realistic price tag – with seriously tempting lease deals to boot.

This latest version gets a little more power and a sharper, more handsome aesthetic – the headlights have been reshaped and the taillights now reach into the bootlid, while the front bumper boasts a more sculpted design.

BMW isn’t claiming any chassis revisions, but the company does employ a policy of continuous improvement throughout a model’s lifecycle so there may yet be dynamic differences between this latest version and the original to report.

The turbocharged, six-cylinder engine has been uprated by 10bhp to 322bhp – it’s essentially the same version of the N55 unit that the M235i coupe has used since its launch in early 2014. Despite the modest power increase BMW isn’t claiming any reduction in 0-62mph times – BMW claim the manual cars will hit the benchmark in 5.1 seconds fractionally quicker than the 5.2 seconds to 60mph we recorded. The automatic M135i has a claimed 0-62mph of...