BMW M4 Competition review

It’s the BMW M4, of course. When the first one was launched in 2014, those of us who geek out over performance car lineage saw the renaming of the two-door M3 in line with a motorway that passes Slough as… a bit of an affront. But it was an instant hit, and those who actually spend big money on said performance cars bought almost twice as many of these as the M3 four-door it was so closely related to.

BMW knows its customers well, clearly, and M4 buyers are what it calls ‘extroverts’. Which is one way of putting it. And it explains those elongated kidney grilles, which don’t actually look too offensive in real life, where the rest of the car’s visual aggression – especially in optional Sao Paulo yellow paint – backs them up. Honest.

This is the second-gen M4, right?

Correct. The G82 replaced the F82 in 2020: hop forward to the present day and we’re now onto the facelifted version of the Mk2. How time flies. Oh, and don't be fooled by the images above: BMW hasn't got images of the updated car on UK plates, but rest assured we've driven it here in Britain (though not as the manual shown in images seven and nine - eep). If you scroll through to the yellow car, you'll see what the pre-facelift M4 looked like. Minimal changes, eh?

Underneath, an ECU remap pumps the 3.0-litre twin-turbo straight-six’s power up from 503 to 523bhp, and while torque stays the same at 479lb ft, 0-62mph is now chalked off in 3.5 seconds (or 3.7s in the convertible). Top speed is limited to 155mph.

And, um, that’s about it. The LED headlights are new, the 12.3in instrument display and 14.9in touchscreen run a new operating system, the steering wheel is a fresh design and you’ve got the choice of finishing it in Alcantara. But other than a few other cosmetic tweaks, that’s your lot.

I can still have rear-wheel drive, can’t I?

Er… no. BMW already did away with the manual M4 in the UK - making do with the ZF auto’s paddleshifters instead of a more assertive twin-clutch transmission - so it’s no stranger to killing off things we like. So RWD is gone too. Boo. We were big fans of it, but given BMW expected 80 per cent of M4 sales to be taken up by the AWD xDrive version - which can send everything to the back wheels anyway - we can see why it’s quietly been retired. Still…

All that means the price has gone up. Again. Whereas the G82 cost £76k from launch, the M4 Competition now starts at £87,495. Yikes. Charge a little extra for the facelift, omit the cheaper RWD car, sprinkle a bit of inflation on top… it all adds up.

But this is a vastly more grown up prospect, isn’t it?

Indeed. The first M4 arrived as the M3 family went turbocharged for the first time, and it wasn’t an especially smooth transition. Those early F82 M4s cars could be spiteful, and the car forged itself a reputation for being a fair old handful. As anyone who experienced an M4’s rear wheels spinning during a third to fourth upchange (in a straight line) will attest.

Those sharper edges have mostly gone now, and remember BMW built more weight into the M4 (our test car was 1,850kg unladen) for reasons of safety and emissions. Which sounds like positive spin to rival ‘I actually used lockdown to grow as a person’.

Mind you, the garish grille and M Drift Analyser mode of the latest M4 suggest the car’s retained some of its wild side; perhaps even amplified it. Time to have a go…

You can view the grown-up M4 in one of two ways, depending on whether your glass is half empty or full: on the one hand, the feverish excitement of the old car has been neutered and this doesn’t dazzle as brightly away from the freedom of a circuit. On the other, its arrival negated the need for a car as anaemic as the Audi RS5 overnight, proving it’s possible to be friendly and usable while still having a brilliant chassis beneath.

With the BMW M2 now adopting the size, power and swagger of M3 Coupes previous, and the M5 (and its M8 cousin) having taken a sizeable stride over the £100k barrier – adopting a limo-like serenity in the process – BMW appears to have bumped the M3 and M4’s maturity up to adopt a newfound gap in the product line-up. The fact BMW’s UK sales folk say buyers swap in and out of M4s from 911s and Vantages suggest it lives in a luxurious corner of the market very different to the highly strung homologation special roots its badge traces back to. Judged as such, this supreme all-rounder of an M4 is a triumph.