BMW M4 CS 2024 Review – International

The 2024 BMW M4 CS will hit Australian showrooms in the fourth quarter of this year, priced from $254,900 plus on-road costs.

That’s a lot of shekels for a rebodied M3, given the sedan powerhouse begins at $161,300 plus ORCs in Australia, although the M4 Coupe also opens at ‘just’ $168,700 plus ORCs.

Of course, the CS is hella quick and, in keeping with current practice, attracts a relatively modest (in this case, $5000) premium over the equivalent M3 version (from $249,900).

Compared to the M4 Competition xDrive Coupe, which starts at $186,500 plus ORCs, you’re looking at $4560 for every extra kilowatt.

If it can be perceived to help with going quicker, the 2024 BMW M4 CS probably has it. If not, well, it might not be the car for you.

It does score merino leather upholstery, so there is at least a nod to luxury here, and there are two heated and electrically controlled carbon-fibre bucket seats.

Forward of that is a stupidly thick-rimmed Alcantara-trimmed steering wheel and carryover gear from the stock M4 Competition, including a tyre pressure indicator and repair kit, an alarm system, carbon-fibre trim finishes (including the paddle shifters), DAB tuner, a head-up display, wireless phone charging and the Connected Professional package for the navigation.

There are two wheel options (the same star pattern, but in either black or golden bronze) and either sport or semi-slick tyres, and four standard paint codes – and they’re all no-cost options.

The same can’t be said for the ceramic brake system, which costs another $19,000.

No NCAP operation has thrown a 2024 BMW M4 CS up against a wall yet, nor have they tossed heavy things at it, but it does boast a surprising number of passive and active safety features for a track-based model.

There is parking distance control, front collision warning, lane departure warning, speed limit info and a driving assistant system all standard, along with a 10-stage traction control system.

Back when the E46 BMW M3 CSL made its debut, some of the more cynical among us wondered how much of its lap-time advantage came down to its stickier cup-style rubber and how much was down to the myriad of small tweaks they’d made over the stock M3.

Well, the 2024 BMW M4 CS is kinda more of the same.

Sure, it’s 20kg lighter than the M4 Competition, and it has a carbon-fibre bonnet, front splitter, a bigger air intake, a carbon-fibre rear lip spoiler and a carbon-fibre roof, plus the cool yellow low-beam lights from the 2023 M4 CSL.

Beneath that bonnet is a strong aluminium strut brace to stiffen the front-end in cornering, plus the aluminium S58 inline six, which retains the coolest M3/M4 tech – like its sleeve-free, closed-deck crankcase construction, the forged crankshaft, the 3D-printed cylinder head and the twin sump chambers to guarantee oil supply to those hard-to-reach places at high-G cornering.

The eight-speed ZF-sourced automatic transmission is reworked, with a stronger multi-plate clutch to deliver all-wheel drive (switchable to rear-drive-only in Track mode), and there’s an active differential across the rear axle.

The M4 CS gets its own kinematics program, with different wheel camber, dampers, auxiliary springs and anti-roll bars to the M4 Competition, too, and its electronically controlled dampers give it adaptive suspension.

It runs Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 (275/35ZR19) rubber up front – or a free choice of semi-slick Cup 2R rubber – and 285/30ZR20 tyres at the back.

Is there a limit to the potency of the classical BMW straight six? Not if the S58 in the 2024 BMW M4 CS is any guide, because the 3.0-litre engine has been uprated from the 353kW of the stock M3 that launched here in 2021 (and is 15kW up on the M4 Competition Coupe) to now sit at 405kW.

That’s largely been achieved by cranking the boost pressure of the two monoscroll turbochargers to 2.1bar and tweaking the ECU to take advantage of it, and it delivers its power peak at 6250rpm, though it keeps pulling to a 7200rpm redline.

The thing of it is the torque, with the 650Nm peak thumping home at just 2750rpm and hanging in until 5950rpm – or just 300rpm lower than the power peak.

That’s a broader spread than the old Competition version, which had its torque peak ranging from 2750-5500rpm, though it retains the same revs for peak power.

According to BMW M, the 2024 BMW M4 CS will return 10.2L/100km on the combined cycle (WLTP), which translates to 232g/km of CO2.

That’s almost identical to the M4 Competition Coupe at 10.1L/100km, even with the added power of the CS, because the WLTP consumption protocol doesn’t involve the kind of throttle openings that access the added turbo boost.

We only had six laps of Austria’s Salzburgring to assess the 2024 BMW M4 CS, and while that’s enough to get a good handle on its cutting-edge qualities, it’s only a skimmer’s view of the package.

Yes, the M4 CS will be driven on track, but it will mostly be driven on the road, and mostly at speeds significantly lower than the ones achieved here.

The M4 CS is belligerently gruff at low revs, and regardless of your size you’ll need to move the steering wheel up and the seat back to get into it, so high are the seat sides (which you’ll thank it for in the corners).

Switching it all on is the same doddle it is in the M3/M4 series, and it has Comfort, Sport and Track modes as options, and they’re pretty easy to get to on the console, rather than reaching up to the screens.

You expect the M4 CS to be quick in a straight line, and it is. BMW M claims a 0-100km/h sprint in 3.4 seconds, and a 200km/h burst in 11.1, and that feels pretty right.

What the raw numbers don’t reveal are the theatrics it puts you through to get there, with a range of timbres and tones before roaring up to the redline and doing it all over again.

The brakes are pretty astonishing, and the sheer grip offered up by the Cup 2 versions of Michelin’s Pilot Cup rubber is going to challenge any preconceived ideas you might have had about maximum turn-in speeds.

We saw 285km/h on the curved back straight at the Salzburgring, and it had plenty more to come. We braked it into the fast right hander ending that straight, changed back a gear and punched through the apex, still in sixth gear, still dominating the road surface beneath it at more than 250km/h.

Its mid-corner bite turned the second-gear chicane at the end of the front straight into a third-gear kink, and the switch from cheerful, predictable all-wheel drive M4 CS in Sport mode to cranky, howling rear-drive monster (only with DSC off) was a lot less dramatic than we’d feared, in large part thanks to the active rear differential.

It’s a very well-sorted track package, despite its 1835kg and despite M’s comical steering wheel that dulls the front-end’s feedback to the point of frustration.

While this section forms part of our ‘driving and comfort’ assessment, the 2024 BMW M4 CS has driving and it has comfort, but not at the same time.

It doesn’t even seriously nod to comfort, and you can tell immediately that it doesn’t care, either.

The hints are there with the acres of carbon-fibre trim and the stiff-sided carbon-fibre seat tubs, but at least they are electronically adjustable.

There is a head-up display and a 12.3-inch instrument cluster, both of which can be customised to a driver’s needs, and the cluster sits together with the 14.9-inch multimedia display behind a single curved glass screen.

There’s cloud-based navigation as part of BMW’s Live Cockpit Professional set-up, with wireless charging and connectivity, and it even scores shift lights, a drift analyser, a lap timer and a 10-step traction control system.

It isn’t all hard work, though, with seat and steering wheel heating to go with the dual-zone air-conditioning system.

Big question, this, because the 2024 BMW M4 CS is now the sort of money that opens up a big world of both new and older sports cars.

I wouldn’t buy it, though, just because M’s stupidly thick steering wheel rim dampens the front-end’s conversations to the point of infuriation. There is no choice of a thinner rim, nor does M have any plans for one. It’s like holding a squishy Coke can in each hand.

But that’s just me.

For the BMW M lovers of the world, it’s a more logical step up from the normal M4, and it’s really the last chance at a pure sports machine on the way up the BMW model range.

2024 BMW M4 CS Coupe at a glance:
Price: $254,900 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Final quarter 2024
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder twin-turbo petrol
Output: 405kW/650Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 10.2L/100km (WLTP)
CO2: 232g/km (WLTP)
Safety rating: Not tested