New BMW M4 Competition review _ 2021's hottest coupe driven _ Autocar

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the new bmw m4 on the plus side it has a 503 horsepower 3 liter twin turbo charged six cylinder engine and then it also has this nose so the signs from the inside are initially not necessarily any more auspicious than those from the outside for example these seats which are not standard have this bizarre carbon fiber thing in the middle i'm not sure what you're supposed to rest on it i think i have to be a lot more excited about seeing this car than i am uh to be of any use but they are just a bit weird they feel for effect because it makes sense in a formula one car or a single seater it locks your legs in place you break with that foot you accelerate without foot in a road car just a bit weird and then there are the other things well the thing called a 1725 curb weight 1800 kilos if you include the 75 kilogram driver and fuel allowance that the eu does when it makes its numbers up or low 75 kilos for fuel and a driver means either not a lot of fuel or not a lot of driver and i just wonder if and i've had this thought before that maybe what bmw means by an m car is somewhat different to what you and i think of as an m car certainly from the off and i've thought about the previous couple of m3s and it is maybe why bmw introduced the m2 the m3 has grown i mean remember how small and compact the e30 was it's grown into such a car that there's been space for an m2 sometimes even a 1m coupe to slot underneath it and become the car that this used to be so i just think that what i think an m3 m4 is and what bmw thinks an m3 m4 is and not necessarily the same thing this car has morphed more towards being like an amg over the years when you see how many amgs they sell maybe that's not a surprise but it is worth looking deeper because remember when all said and done this is a 510 horsepower 485 pound foot three liter straight six turbocharged bmw with rear wheel drive an engine in the front an electronically controlled limited slip differential how bad can that be well the answer is not bad at all if i go into this little menu here which is quite easy to work out actually compared to some rivals you end up with settings for engine chassis steering and brake you want the brake straightaway i can tell you in sport setting it gives two kind of pedal definitions one of which is incredibly soft and the other one gives the kind of meat to the retaliation that you would expect from a sports club to be kind of in sport all the time the chassis in comfort has also sport and sport plus settings on the road in the uk comfort is fine there are some roads in which it's still a little bit when you get bad roads it's still a little bit firm if anything but by and large comfort is good steering affects the steering weight rather than introduces any more feel or anything like that but again it's good and if you really then say okay what kind of car is this it reveals itself to be the kind of driver's car that you want an m bmw to be today i'm on gloriously sunny springtime roads in the south of england which is lovely but what i can't do is press the esc off button and go into all of the menus and enter the sort of drift mode where it assesses how good you are at sliding so have a look at that there is a video elsewhere on this channel where we take the m3 and pitch it against an alpha julia portrafolio on circuit only there's no road driving in that test there is no track driving in this test but within the confines of a 60 mile an hour limit and what we can do sensibly on the road let's see just what this car can do it's funny idle it makes it sort of quite a growly grumbly noise which sounds a lot more sixish as you wind it up second gear you can feel it trouble the back wheels even in the dry in 10 degrees and it's not as if it's on stone cold tyres so it has a lot of power and a lot of torque it's the sort of car that really does make for easy easy overtaking because it's just got oodles of power and torque on tap if you whack it across it'll stay in the gears that you select and as with some of the other drive modes you can select how aggressively it changes gears if you leave it to its own devices how long it holds onto gears for and it is reasonably easy to select that too it's just on the back of the gear lever down there and you can feel for it without having to take your eyes off the road which is quite handy ditto like i say the multimedia system touch screens are very handy they allow over air updates and things like that so my steering at the moment is in light my exhaust is loud i'm going to turn it down i can put the steering into sport add some weight to it german cars get tested on the autobahn in development a lot so they're very stable around straight ahead and this is no exception german roads are much smoother than british roads which is why sometimes in comfort even that's a bit too normally and when all is said and done this corners really impressively with loads of poise not loads of steering feel a little bit of roll and lean but just with a really nice balance it's really fast actually too fast for the roads as are all sports car these days and so ultimately it is a really capable if slightly fidgety grand touring sports car with a cracking engine and loads of power if you want a more lightweight more agile sports car then well an m2 should be your choice but as big bruising sports coupes go i quite like this one\n"