Can the sensible new M2 CS maintain its head up in opposition to two icons of BMW’s M automotive lineage?
The brand new BMW M2 CS is a particular form of quick BMW. Nicely, it actually appears that method to me, if not fairly to the opposite judges of our Britain’s Greatest Driver’s Automotive shootout.
Democracy might be merciless, as BBDC historical past has confirmed repeatedly for BMW M vehicles. A mixture of ‘Cup’ tyres and changeable climate might be crueller nonetheless.
My suspicion is that if all 5 judges had spent as a lot time within the M2 CS as I did, driving it as much as and again from the Lake District so many a whole lot of miles in higher situations in addition to unhealthy ones, it could have ranked larger. Or, to place it one other method, I believe it deserves one other probability at some glory. And that is it.
Right this moment, the M2 CS meets a few vehicles that present precisely what it takes to earn a spot among the many M automotive immortals. In such firm, we’ll discover out simply how particular this automotive’s specific model of ‘Competitors Sport’ actually is.
We have all the sunshine that an early winter’s day can present and, along with the brand new M2, we have got a four-year-old ‘F90’ BMW M5 CS to take with us, plus a 22-year-old ‘E46’ BMW M3 CSL. This should not be your common Monday.
The M5 represents the final time BMW produced genuinely spectacular outcomes with the CS suffix, and it is the primary — and as but solely — time it has been used on an M5. And the M3 CSL? Nicely, it could in all probability give each the unique M1 and the ‘E9’ CSL ‘Batmobile’ a fairly stiff problem for the title of most celebrated M automotive of all time.
For those who occur to search out £150,000 of used banknotes stuffed in your Christmas stocking this yr, you may take your choose. That quantity would get you a really good M3 CSL, a mid-ranking M5 CS or a completely loaded, new M2 CS — with sufficient change to construct a storage during which to maintain it.
The beginner can be significantly the best of the three to come back by. E46 CSLs usually solely come onto the market in twos and threes; F90 CSs seem much more seldomly, which really displays their rarity.
UK registration knowledge has it that there are fewer than 300 E46 CSLs left, after a provide peak of just a little over 350 UK-registered examples a few years after the completion of the automotive’s 2003 manufacturing run. Not many, then. However there have by no means been greater than 50 extra-special M5 CSs on the DVLA’s books. If you would like hen’s-teeth-collectable, the larger automotive is definitely the extra apparent place to hunt it out.
What we’re surveying earlier than us right here is M division’s first experiment of the trendy period into crash-diet engineering, alongside its very newest and what’s maybe its most deliciously ornate.
In that respect, I believe the M5 offers the E46 a run for its cash. The CSL’s light-weight composite entrance bumper seems like an experiment. There’s an virtually fundamental, motorsport-level sense of lashed-up visible goal about its bare carbonfibre entrance splitter vanes and that improvised-looking additional round ram air consumption.
The automotive has an aluminium bonnet, in all probability as a result of carbonfibre composite tooling wasn’t as much as making a panel like that in 2003; it has glassfibre composite bucket seats and it has metal brakes.
It was, although, the primary BMW with a carbonfibre roof, which, along with the cast alloy wheels and light-weight glazing, meant it weighed 110kg lower than a daily E46 M3 coupé: 1385kg in whole.
The M5 CS’s weight-saving did not obtain as a lot. It was 70kg lighter than a daily M5 Competitors, though it nonetheless weighed in at a whacking nice 1940kg in full operating order. However the crash-diet efforts are fantastic to admire right here.
This automotive’s ‘gold-bronze’ cast wheels are completely beautiful, and the sculpted, bare carbonfibre underside of its vented bonnet is able to take your breath away each time you elevate it up.
The M2 CS has a carbonfibre roof too, to not point out that relatively cute CFRP ducktail bootlid, which so clearly apes the CSL’s rounder light-weight metal equal.
Gold-bronze cast wheels, along with the weight-saving within the cabin, carry it in some 30kg lighter than a daily M2 auto, at 1700kg on the button.
The CSL is a automotive from a distinct dimension constructed totally for the wild, unfiltered rawness of its atmospheric six-cylinder engine, the sledgehammer savagery of its automated guide gearbox and the linked really feel of its drum-tight journey.
The M5 CS, in the meantime, does really feel studiously fashionable, but it has damping and wheel management that appears virtually supernatural for one thing of its dimension and weight. Due to that free-revving 626bhp V8 and absolutely switchable four-wheel drive, it additionally has a personality that may swing from assured ‘bahn-storming sophisticate to tyre-bonfiring, hot-rod hooligan on the press of a button.
Its dynamic vary is genuinely staggering, and its capability to encourage confidence is totally unmatched by any super-saloon on this tester’s expertise.
No fashionable M automotive snarls and thrashes fairly like an E46 CSL. It had BMW’s much-loved ‘S54’ 3.2-litre straight six in its very rarest, fiercest road-legal type.
Whenever you unleash it, there is not Herculean poke, however the CSL simply sounds — and certainly acts — so rattling quick. Past 6000rpm it is loosening your dental fillings and fizzing by your elbows. The M2’s stiffened engine mounts give it a suggestion of the CSL’s outright rawness, however it actually is barely a touch. It is sufficient to elevate it, although, to take it out of the realm of the extraordinary and make you’re feeling higher linked to it.
The tautness of the M2 CS’s journey is akin to the CSL’s. In the end, the E46 feels firmer, shorter and leaner over a difficult highway, however the CS carries its further bulk and weight relatively effectively. There’s an surprising sleepiness of off-centre steering response to the CSL in comparison with at present’s darty and agile efficiency vehicles, however that does not imply there is not fantastic precision and steadiness.
It guides you in direction of the apex, providing you with supreme confidence to assault as onerous as you dare. Get courageous and the CSL responds with superb progressiveness and delicacy. The tougher you drive it, the extra polished it feels.
In distinction to the CSL, the M5 CS feels hilariously over-endowed. Stick it in rear-drive, DSC-off mode and it’ll smear its Pirelli Corsas right into a gloriously benign slide. Depart it in four-wheel-drive mode and you’ll simply benefit from the tactility, accuracy and positivity of the steering as an alternative.
And the M2 CS? It is received sufficient of the M5’s outright grunt and rampant dealing with adjustability to make it really feel quick and vivacious, and it is available in a bundle nearer to the CSL’s for compactness and wieldiness. Genuinely, it is no less than near a best-of-both-worlds scenario.
Verdict
1st: BMW M3 CSL The CSL stays the high-water mark in its exalted efficiency automotive lineage for spine-tingling rawness, drama and pleasure. Vivid and wild but brilliantly polished on the restrict.
2nd: BMW M5 CS Maybe the very best M5 there has ever been; fairly probably the very best super-saloon of all. Does all of it, from extravagant rear-drive hooliganism to tactile really feel.
third: BMW M2 CS Falls barely wanting the massive weapons for combustive presence and dynamic star high quality, however for a brand-new child M automotive at a five-figure worth, it is very spectacular certainly.
Recollections of the CSL:
Stunt driver and good friend of Autocar Mauro Calo, who drove on our check, was one of many first individuals to drive an E46 CSL on UK roads: it was he who received the job of driving a left-hand-drive press automotive over to Autocar’s London workplaces, 22 years in the past, for our very first report.
“I had carried out one European driving job for Autocar on the time,” says Calo, “and simply as I might completed and highway check editor Ben Oliver was thanking me for doing it, he requested me if I might do one other the week after.
“I received the final flight to Munich one weekday night, then a taxi from the airport to Garching to gather the automotive. I drove it again to the UK by the night time, stopping solely to gas it and to catch the primary ferry from Calais.
“I could not consider my luck. It felt like such a particular automotive, and I used to be driving it on unimaginable roads. I bear in mind leaving the autobahn slip highway at Munich and merging behind an Aston Martin DB9, which on the time was nonetheless a really new automotive itself. The 2 of us chased one another down this derestricted stretch of autobahn, method past 100mph, for mile after mile.
“My first relaxation was on the ferry from Calais, actually; I bear in mind handing the automotive over to the highway check group at Autocar’s Teddington workplaces mid-morning. It was the one utilized in David Vivian’s August first drive report (Autocar, 12 August 2003), and the efficiency numbers have been carried out at Millbrook. The complete highway check that appeared just a few weeks later was carried out on a right-hand-drive automotive, although.
