BMW M4

Meet The New M4. You’ve seen it before, albeit with a different name and slightly different form. It’s the car the old M3 coupe was before BMW’s lab technicians cell-divided the 3-Series into two model lines sharing the same DNA.

The coupe became the 4 Series while the four door sedan retained the 3 Series name, and both now have their fruity M-versions which are designed to push the right buttons with sports car nuts. Based on the current, F30 generation 3 and F32 4 series, the new M4 is longer and wider than its predecessor, but weighs about the same. It also gets its own chassis code for the first time: F82. Extremists applaud BMW’s fanatical approach to weight saving, and on this generation, BMW fashions the front and rear suspension links, as well as the hood and fenders, from aluminium. Carbon fibre is used for the roof, drive shaft, and boot lid.

Even though the M3 and the M4 are identical in many ways and share many part numbers, that trunk is one of the bigger differences. Engineers tell us they wanted the two cars to have the same aerodynamic properties, but the airflow over the coupe’s shorter roof would have required a large spoiler, which designers didn't want. Instead, they formed a new boot lid with an integrated ducktail spoiler. The thinking was, “If you’re going to do it, do it right.” So while they were designing the new lid, they designed it with a carbon-fibre inner structure and fiberglass outer skin.

Rubber bushings between the regular 4 series rear subframe and unibody allow the assembly to squirm under duress, diluting handling precision. Here, there are no rubber bushings. The subframe is bolted directly to the unibody for a more rigid structure. This, with additional bracing and a stiffer suspension, results in a car that is vastly more responsive and immediate than the regular 4 series. The M4 thus is more eager to let its tail step out. Once that happens, though, it’s easy to hang it out there and control your slip angle or snap it back into line. It’s a total gas, supremely responsive and controllable.

The downside to such a delightful chassis is that, even in the softest of its three adjustable damper settings, the M4 is stiff legged. It’s a typical trade-off for such flat, predictable handling. The brakes are quite strong, but the pedal isn’t quite as responsive at the top of its travel as we’d like. Electric power steering saves weight in the M4, too, and its fantastic weighting can be tailored from Popeye (Sport+) to Olive Oyl (Comfort), with Sport being a comfortable yet meaty middle ground for the majority.

As part of the model cell division, the engine has lost two-cylinders and gained turbo power. Because BMW has decided that half a litre is the ideal cylinder volume, the S55 inline-six powering the M4 displaces the same 3.0 litres as other BMW in line sixes, but it’s a unique piece. The block, the crank, the pistons, the rods, and the turbos are all new. The head is about the only major part to carry over from any other engine.

Yes, winding the V-8 powered E92 M3 beyond 8000 rpm was satisfying, but you know what else is satisfying? Torque. Right now. And it’s not like the F82’s 7600 rpm fuel cut off is low. (It’s actually 800 rpm higher than the 1995 E36 M3’s redline.) The F82 packs an additional 11 horsepower over its predecessor’s V-8, and the twin-turbo 3.0-litre has 150 more Newton metres than the E92’s 4.0 litre unit. The result is an immediacy well beyond what the old car was capable of.

Under light load, occupants hear some distant turbo whistle and pop off sneeze, but floor it, and butterfly valves up stream of the outer two tailpipes open, allowing the exhaust gases to bypass most of the muffler. The result is a bawdy roar, a much bigger sound than expected from a motor small enough to fit in the M4. Inside the car at lower speeds, the soundtrack is augmented by synthesised noise piped through the speakers but the Alan Parsons approach is a minor part of the sonic signature. To bystanders, the M4’s tailpipes spit a savage, race car tune.

As did the outgoing M3, the M4 will offer a choice of a six-speed manual transmission and seven speed dual-clutch automatic. This is perfectly acceptable, as it gives us an excuse to test more derivatives of the car. Like seemingly every other one of the car’s systems, the dual-clutch box has three settings. The most aggressive slams into the next gear too hard for street use, but we were annoyed that the slower settings take longer to respond to commands from the paddles. If you want your shift to occur immediately after you pull the paddle, you get harsh shifts. This is just one more reason to order the manual, in which every shift parameter is infinitely variable.

We’ve questioned a lot of the changes BMW has made to its vehicles lately, wondering whether the company is building on its successes or changing its cars and making them more complicated simply because it could. The F32 4 series might not be exactly the 3-series we want it to be, but the M4 is unquestionably an M3.