BMW M4 (2014-2020) review

There’s plenty of room for all but the tallest people in the back, while the boot’s pretty commodious too. This could plausibly be your only car. And now, over to Top Gear’s Ollie Marriage, who ran the M4’s sister car – the M3 saloon – for the best part of a year.

“It was occasionally snatchy, sometimes unpredictable, often angry. This one still is, even after 16,000 miles, and many people in the office still don’t like it as a result. They think it’s a bit like having a big cat as a pet. It might be related to your standard puss, but there’s something about the way it pulls at a leash…

“I don’t deny that, just as I don’t deny that the newer Competition Package version is a better car, its revised suspension and differential settings improving drivability. But as we’ve said so often in the past, cars with foibles are often more engaging, and it was the M3’s duality in this regard that made me fall for it.

“I could commute to work in my 3 Series at 30mpg, relishing the logical layout, the usefulness of that little row of buttons, the driving position, the ergonomics, the presentation of information, the quality and all the rest; and then on the way home, I could let it off the lead and inject myself with a shot of pure M3.”

So there you go. A one-car-fits-all performance thing, so long as you don’t mind the odd scrap when the weather goes awry.