The perfect BMW garage
BEEMERS: COVERING ALL THE BASES BETWEEN THEM
Fastest SUV and four-door GT car that we have tested.
The one is the fastest SUV The Citizen has ever tested and the other is officially the hastiest four-door GT car to feature on our high-performance test list.
Problem is, if you want a piece of this magnificent duo, you have to fork out R6.2 million up front and make sure you have another bar or two handy to quench their thirst. That is a lot of money, even for a tenderpreneur. But as this combination will not see the inside of over 99.99% of garages in South Africa, it should feature prominently on most people’s todo lists for when they do strike it rich in the Lotto.
If you are blessed enough to shop in this aisle and are a fan of the BMW badge, then the M8 Competition Gran Coupe and X5M Competition will form the perfect his and hers garage.
And before I’m being chastised for any form of political uncorrectness by making that statement, I never mentioned who will be driving what. In fact, for those who might have taken offence by assuming I associated the his part to the GT and the hers part to the SUV, some soccer dads I know would actually prefer the X5M over the M8.
The two cars dovetail perfectly. The X5M provides the high seating position, comfort and versatility for daily school runs and shopping trips, while the M8 Gran Coupe offers supercar performance in elegant luxury for (rather slow) daily commuting. Over weekends, the more adventurous SUV is a very capable off-roader, while the gentleman’s tourer takes care of open road trips with very decent luggage space.
By reaching 100km/h from a standstill in 3.39 seconds during Road Test Editor Mark Jones’ high-performance test, the M8 Competition Gran Coupe toppled the Mercedes-AMG GT63 S 4Matic+ 4-Door Coupe as the fastest four-door vehicle. The 14 twodoor models ahead of it on the list are incidentally headed by its sibling, the M8 Coupe Competition, which holds out all-time record with a 3.13 sprint.
The M8 Gran Coupe shares the same engine specifications with it’s two-door sibling; a 4.4-litre V8 twin turbocharged petrol engine which sends 460kW/750Nm to all four wheels via eight-speed Sports Automatic Transmission.
The Gran Coupe is 115kg heavier than the Coupe, 231mm longer and offers 20 litres more boot space for a total of 440 litres. Needless to say, legroom in the rear is much more acceptable than that of the Coupe, which was so bad that it even annoyed my six-year-old.
The term Gran Coupe does have the tendency to divide opinion, but the M8 is sculpted so well that anyone scoffing at the idea of two additional doors is probably just plain jealous. A feeling guaranteed to amplify by the shameless V8 exhaust notes.
The cockpit is a mixture of racing DNA and elegant comfort. If the comfort you need doesn’t come standard, have it fitted as an optional extra. Does another R100k worth of options even make a dent in a R3 423 862 bill?
With the car’s core DNA taken straight off the race track, the M8 is fitted with every imaginable system to make it as fast as possible and provide handling that will make the average driver feel like Lewis Hamilton.