Well, it could have worked... that's how Nissan tries to place Infiniti... by going straight after the 3-series. Seems to work pretty well if you can at least hit close to the mark.
RE: legroom? The 3-series of the time didn't have it, either... well-benchmarked...
All that i've heard is non-short wheelbase fwd cars is that they're terrible at anything else then a straight line. I've never taken a FWD cornering or anything like that. So I wouldn't no any better what they're capable of.
No four-door or platform based on a four-door actually corners that well without some suspension or tire tweaks. Most cranks would have you believe that RWD always equals oversteer and FWD always equals understeer. But that equation works only under power. When you corner, you don't keep your foot flat to the floor, you brake for the corner, go around it, and accelerate on the way out.
Going screaming into a racetrack corner, I can tell you this... everything understeers. Don't matter where the engine is, which wheels get the power and how much grip it has, it'll understeer. You lift off and brake to create rotation then. If you've got a car set-up to oversteer, it'll oversteer... the old Evos were set up to oversteer easily if you threw them at a corner, but I don't know how the new one is set-up. The M3 will do it if the corner angles are right and the corner is wide enough (otherwise, the great grip of the thing will prevent it). Some hot hatches can do this... and do it well.
If you've got a car set-up to understeer, it'll just understeer less (this includes 99% of road-cars made nowadays, from the 3-series to the Mazda3). You'll need to give it a lot of steering or a good flick to get some neutral-steer or over-steer going. My car handles like a dream on a winding road, but it needs a lot of suspension tweaking to keep from understeering at 10/10ths.
If you've got a well set-up car, like, say an MX-5, a Clio or an old Integra, it'll adopt a neutral stance and shoot you out of the corner so fast you won't mind how little power it actually has.
It's all in the suspension geomtery and alignment. Anything can be fun if you let it be. I remember tales of how badly a neighbor (Korean student, I believe) drove on his way back from a dinner up in the hills... something about having to foot the bill... he had his FWD Galant sideways half-the-time on the way down, but since it was FWD, he just had to keep his foot in and it would sort itself out...
And I have no hopes of beating any M car. 
So if we roll, we need to roll during the winter and when I first start the car up after 4 hours of cool down time.
