BMW M4 COMPETITION
On some epic roads and flat-out at the test track, we find out if the G82-generation BMW M4 has what it takes to join the ranks of iconic M-cars. Just don’t mention the you-know-what
The new M4 is here! Can it continue the good M division work seen most recently in the M2 CS? We find out with a thorough investigation of its abilities on road and track
FIRST THERE WERE THE ICONIC E NUMBERS: 30, 36, 46 and 92. Each one with its own story to tell, from homologation special to glorious V8. Then came the F82, which had a difficult start but came good in the end. And now there is this, the G82. Where will it sit on the grid of one of the great performance car dynasties? Knowing that I’m about to spend the day finding out is both exciting and a little nerve-racking. As a quick recap, there are two levels of M4 (and M3, but we’re dealing with the two-door today). The base spec car has 473bhp and 406lb ft of torque and comes with a manual gearbox as standard. However, that version is not available in the UK. The only variant that we get is the M4 Competition, which has 503bhp at 6250rpm and 479lb ft from 2750rpm and comes with an eight-speed automatic gearbox as standard. For the moment, all the power goes to the rear wheels, but all-wheel-drive models will arrive in the coming months.
By the way, just in case you’ve come here for any commentary about… well, you know what… I’m afraid you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I’m not even going to mention the gril… the slatted bit at the front. Won’t even hint at it. If I mention kidneys, it will probably only be because I’m making an analogy about cooking. This is a magazine about the driving experience, not the design ethos. Thankfully.
Anyway, it wasn’t the first thing about the new M4 Competition that caught my eye as I drove into the evo car park early this morning. Partly because I approached the car from the side. No, the first thing that assaulted the senses was the Sao Paulo yellow paint. Driving across various shires for the previous half an hour, I’d assumed that the glow in the eastern sky was dawn breaking. Now,
‘WHERE WILL IT SIT ON THE GRID OF ONE OF THE GREAT PERFORMANCE CAR DYNASTIES?’
pulling up outside the office, I realise that the luminescence that had hung above the white layers of frost and morning mist was probably provided by the M4’s arresting shade of sunshine. It’s a no-cost option.
A quick perusal of the rest of the exterior reveals some other options on this particular car. The blue accents in the lights either side of That Which Will Not Be Mentioned indicate that the laser lights are fitted (£1500). The M Carbon Pack is a hefty £6750 and on the outside it renders the rear spoiler, diffuser, front inlets and mirror caps in carbonfibre to match the standard carbonfibre roof with its distinctive aerodynamic ridges. On the inside, the same pack switches the standard M Sport seats for M Carbon bucket seats, which saves a useful 9.6kg per chair. The rest of the carbon in the interior, and there is quite a bit of it, comes as standard. If you want carbon brakes (this car is on standard brakes) then you’ll need to shell out nearly £8k for the M Pro Pack, which also includes the M Driver’s Pack (£2095 on its own) that raises the top speed to 180mph.
The fact that I don’t have to remove the key from my pocket to unlock the door, plus the way the boot powers itself open, is proof that the £990 Comfort Pack is present and correct. Given that there is a thick frost sparkling on the grass, my hands are thankful for the heated steering wheel this pack also brings (heated seats are standard). There is also a Technology Plus Pack, of which more in a bit, that costs £1750 and takes the total price of this M4 Competition from £76,055 up to £87,745. That’s a lot of money, but competitive with a Mercedes-amg C63 S Coupé, while a Porsche 911 Carrera S starts at over £94,000.
If you like buttons then you’ll certainly feel like you’re getting value for money when you get into the M4. Festooned is the word. Better than every function being accessed via a touch-screen though. The other thing that immediately catches your attention is the seat. With the grab handles on the sides of the base and the raised ramp between your legs, there is a lot going on. It takes me a moment or two to work out what it reminds me of, but then it hits me – if you could take the base out, then it would make an excellent little toboggan. The bucket’s bolsters hold you well, though, and the overall driving position is perfect, with the seat going nice and low and the wheel extending a good way out from the dashboard.
Press the bright red starter button, which is down next to
the little gear selector, and the S58 engine wakes quickly with a familiar BMW timbre. Gruff yet smooth, but not exactly musical. Nudge the selector across towards you, feel the creep as you let off the brakes and you’re away.
There are myriad settings to investigate, but for the first few miles it’s nice to leave all the buttons alone and concentrate on the fundamentals. Instant impressions are that the M4 feels light and laterally stiff. There is an ease to the steering thanks to relatively little weighting, but as soon as you turn the wheel there is also a directness of response that immediately makes you feel connected and confident.
With a DIN weight of 1725kg, the new M4 Competition is no featherweight, but mass can come from muscle as well as fat and the whole car feels taut and much more honed than I was expecting. Despite the responsiveness, there is also enough relaxation in the suspension travel to deal comfortably with the speed bumps and potholes that litter the first few miles. Imperfections are actually heard more than felt, the stiff structure of the car creating quite a lot of NVH but the suspension keeping you isolated from the impacts.
Put all this together and it means you have a car that offers plenty to enjoy even when you’re just pottering and patiently waiting for temperatures to climb. You can guide the G82 M4 cleanly through bends and feel the potential without in any way troubling the grip. It’s a good start.
A roundabout approaches and instinctively I find myself reaching a finger or two for the left-hand paddle. It’s textured with dimples on the back, like Braille. I have an exploratory feel of the right-hand paddle and find raised dots. I begin wondering if they could or should have gone one step further and written Down and Up on the respective paddles in the bumpy code. Having an auto is, on paper, another of the questionable aspects of the new M4, but in everyday driving like this it certainly offers smoother shifts than the old DCT. It will be interesting to see if it can keep up when we reach the moors and the pace increases.
For the rest of the journey north I have a play with the technology with which this latest M-car is laden. It all seems a bit much for a product from the Motorsport division in my opinion, but it also seems to be what is expected these days. George Foreman, the boxer and face of a range of gril… cooking equipment, once said: ‘My kids’ idea of a hard life is to live in a house with only one phone.’ I know what he meant.
Anyhow, the driver assistance tech that’s controlled by the buttons on the left-hand spoke of the steering wheel is rather fascinating. The combination of lanekeeping, adaptive cruise control and sign recognition is nothing new these days, but the display in the dash showing the cars and trucks in the lanes around me is an intriguing depiction of the car’s awareness. I still don’t entirely trust it though, and feel like a parent sitting next to a child learning to drive and anticipating all the possible pitfalls it might not have seen.
Incidentally, the lane-keeping turns on automatically every time you start the car. The quickest way to turn it off is to press and hold the M Mode button on the transmission tunnel, then confirm the offered Track option. This also disables the central screen, but you’re hardly short of information given that a fairly detailed head-up display comes as standard.
After a couple of reasonably relaxed hours, the Armco stops, then the kerbstones disappear and dry stone walls eventually begin to line the road. It’s a beautifully clear day and I can see the single pale-grey strip of tarmac squirming off along the ridge, empty for miles ahead. Time to stretch the new engine…
Pulling hard through a couple of gears, the first thing that strikes me is just how linear the delivery is. The first iterations of the old S55 engine in the previous M4 felt pretty spiky in their turbocharged delivery, with the boost kicking in hard and often unsettling both car and driver. Things certainly improved massively over the next few years and thankfully that learning has been carried over into this new S58. The turbocharged nature of the engine is almost completely hidden and it means you can extend it all the way through to just over 7000rpm, happy in the knowledge that it will rev cleanly and smoothly. It feels incredibly responsive, too, which makes it a good match for the tone set by the chassis.
Talking of tone, the only real disappointment is that the turbocharged straight-six doesn’t sound better. It’s not unpleasant and there is a definite sense of purpose about it, but it’s hardly mellifluous. AMG’S turbocharged V8 or Alfa’s turbocharged V6 would be much more likely to get recording contracts.
One particular section of the road seems to rise and fall like the back of a cartoon Loch Ness monster, necessitating a certain amount of rise and fall in speed between the blind crests. It’s a good chance to really exercise the gearbox, and by and large it responds well. The shifts are quick and smooth and although they lack the staccato crispness that you’d get with a really good dual-clutch ’box, they never threaten to upset the rear axle with the abruptness that the old BMW DCT could display. Given the choice between the two, I’d stick with this auto, but a refined DCT would arguably have been even better.
A couple of Bear Gry… outdoor types are marching across the moors to my right, but other than that it’s deserted up here. The roads are quite wild, too, and present a really exacting test of the M4’s body control. It isn’t found wanting. Some of the bumps on the ragged outer edges of the road are obvious and some are just plain deceptive, but expected or surprising, the M4 copes. Wheels sometimes leave the ground and then you momentarily feel the true weight of the car, but there never seems to be any real loss of composure.
To me it feels like this G82 continues a chassis trend that began with the E92. That V8-engined M3 coupe had a memorably pointy front end and its sense of nose-led grip continued into the F82. It’s a sensation that is present here, too, but allied to suspension that seems a little more planted and a touch more composed. It has retained the sense of tremendous agility but polished the edges very subtly.
Press the Setup button on the transmission tunnel and the main touchscreen will allow you to deliberate between all the many tweaks you can make. There’s no one around, so, like a good road tester but an apparently drunk driver, I waggle the three-spoke wheel while toggling between the steering settings. Then I lurch for a few hundred yards while testing the difference between the Comfort and Sport settings for the brakes. Once these simple either/or choices are nailed, I move on to the triple choices (Comfort, Sport and Sport Plus) for chassis and powertrain. Finally there is the Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) to consider, because as well as the normal options of On and a halfway house M Dynamic Mode (MDM), when you turn it to Off, this latest M4 then gives you a ten-stage adjustable scale for the traction control. I decide to leave detailed investigation of that to John Barker, who’ll be driving the M4 on track later, but I do go so far as to determine that 0, not 10, is fully off.
And, after giving all the settings a good grilli… interrogation, what I discover is that they all do what they say they do. This might sound more predictable than the outcome of an evo road tester being left alone in a room with a Fox’s selection box, but what I mean is that they are all useable settings. Which might still sound odd, but usually there is a definite sweet spot for set-ups such as these – the Goldilocks combination with perhaps the dampers in
‘THE TARMAC IS EMPTY FOR MILES AHEAD. TIME TO STRETCH THE NEW ENGINE’
Comfort, the drivetrain at its most alert and the steering in Sport. Often one or more of the settings only seems to have been added simply because the engineers could, not because it improves the car.
With the M4, the options all make exactly the changes you think they should. Around town, the lighter steering and more gradual response of the brake pedal in their respective Comfort settings is welcome. If you’re driving quickly then they both feel a little better dialled up to Sport, with a greater sense of connection and immediacy through palm and sole. The powertrain settings ratchet up the alertness from Sunday on the Sofa through to Concerned Cat.
Perhaps most surprising of all, however, is that every one of the chassis variations is useable on the road. From past experience I would have expected the firmest damper setting, Sport Plus, to be unbearable on a British B-road. But although the car is busier down a bumpy road, it doesn’t feel like it is bucking and uncontrollable. Yes, you would probably choose Sport most of the time, as it gives a more flowing feeling, but Sport Plus imbues the car with a supreme feeling of agility and response. It’s really quite addictive. As soon as you turn into a corner the car seems to rotate and lean hard on the outside rear tyre, poised and prepared for you to steer it with the throttle if you want. It’s so reactive that it’s actually nice to dial back the powertrain setting to Sport so that you calm that element down a fraction and ensure smoothness in the way you load up and use the M-diff as you toy with the traction.
If you do provoke it, then there’s no snappiness, just a nice
fluidity and predictability to the slides so that you can really sit into the oversteer with confidence. It all comes back to that sense of tautness and connection that was evident in those first few miles this morning. The M4 Competition is a very accomplished car but it’s also a really fun car.
On paper, its weight gain and auto ’box look questionable, but neither of these feel like impediments on the road. Driving home and then getting back into it a few more times over the next couple of days cements my feeling that while the torque converter and modern tech might make it slightly more refined as a daily driver, enough of an understated sense of purpose still pervades the overall experience that it feels like a proper M-car every time you get in. I’d be amazed if John doesn’t have a ball on track, too. I’ll have mine in a dark colour to hide the gri… because I like dark colours.
‘NEITHER THE WEIGHT GAIN NOR THE AUTO ’BOX FEEL LIKE IMPEDIMENTS ON THE ROAD’