We drive BMW's new M4 CSL! Is it special enough to wear THAT badge? JamesTaylorCAR is your guide...
100kg lighter than M4 CompetitionA burly swell of torque swooshes the BMW M4 CSL down the road, a big fat steering wheel points its king-size grilles at an apex, the front tyres grip hard and the rears smear subtly wide on the exit like butter on toast. So far, so good.
Its 100kg weight saving comes from bodywork ; wheels and brakes ; a titanium exhaust system; and much of those controversial front grilles being deleted, allowing extra cooling airflow in. Lift the carbon bonnet and there’s a huge cast aluminium strut brace across the engine compartment for added stiffness. While the M4 Competition is available as either rear- or all-wheel-drive, the CSL is rear-drive only to save further weight and emphasise its purist ethos.
Specially developed sticky Michelin Cup 2R tyres are standard, although this particular car is on more all-weather-friendly but still very grippy Michelin 4S tyres. Were it fitted with the 2Rs it could no doubt annihilate a twisty road, just as it did the Nurburgring on its way to the fastest laptime a BMW production car has yet recorded.
Jaguar no longer makes its similar-in-ethos Project 8. The ultimate benchmark is Porsche’s 911 GT3. Perhaps it isn’t a totally fair fight: the 911 is a bona fide sports car rather than a modified four-berth passenger car but it is comparable on price, does more with less power than the M4 CSL and has much of the same ethos; in many ways GT3 is to Porsche as CSL is to BMW.