BMW M2 CS review

From £68,79510

BMW's latest 'Competition Sport' special M car is one about which it's surprisingly hard to be cynical

The BMW M Division’s now very well-established approach in conjuring mid-life interest in its modern M cars could easily rouse the cynic in you.

Now that we’ve had CS - and, in one case, even CSL - versions of just about all of the really core M cars of the last ten years or so, the pattern is so well rehearsed that we may wonder if it’s beginning to make regular M cars a little bit less special, in order for enough weight-saving-, power-boosting and driveline-enhancing fairy dust to be kept back for the ‘Competition Sport’ specials. Frankly, how could it not be?

However, when the latest bit of that strategy is made manifest in a car like the BMW M2 CS, such cynicism becomes rather harder to maintain. By ‘harder’, I mean impossible, quite honestly. 

There’s just an abiding sense of rightness - righteousness, even - about it. It’s the consummation of something right at the core of the M Division’s identity - and so wonderfully executed and significant that it almost feels wholesome.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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Being a compact, rear-driven, no-nonsense sports coupe, the BMW M2 was already precisely the sort of car you’d expect BMW’s in-house tuner to treat as the foundation of its business. It doesn’t; because, in reality, this car isn’t quite so commercially successful as that. But somehow the grubby facts of the moment need to be kept out of way in this instance.

Because this is precisely the type, size and style of BMW that enters your mind’s eye when you imagine an M car - isn’t it? And so now that BMW has turned the limelight of its gaze towards it, righted some of its wrongs, and given it qualities that turn it into a proper, world-class driver’s car, it feels like it has repented its transgressions (need we really name them?), rediscovered its old priorities, and purged its soul.

So how, exactly, has it done that? For a start, with one of those nicely understated modern performance cars that you have to look twice at to realise what you’re in the presence of. 

At the front, the CS gets new air intakes and front diffuser trim; and, as standard, the carbonfibre-composite roof and mirror caps that are optional on the regular M2. But it doesn’t really give up its secrets until you’re gazing at its rump - very likely as it overtakes you - when you clock its different CFRP diffuser, and the new lightweight bootlid with its exaggerated ‘built-in’ ducktail spoiler.

Compared with the standard eight-speed-auto M2 (you can’t get a CS manual but, given the ergonomic flaws of the car’s three-pedal layout, that’s perhaps not such a tragic loss), the CS’s homologated weight is some 30kg lighter than the car on which it’s based; thanks, not least, to its staggered-size, bronze-painted, forged alloy wheels. But a great many ‘real’ examples will be lighter still. For one, because this is the only M2 on which you can get optional carbon-ceramic brakes. And, for another, because there’s a titanium exhaust that’s been specially developed for the car by BMW M, and strategically added to the M Performance tuning parts catalogue, that is sure to be quite a lot lighter than the car’s standard active pipes. You can have it fitted by your dealer; and, we can safely assume, it’ll make the car’s twin-turbo straight six (up 50bhp and 37lb ft on the regular M2’s) about as noisy as the engineers would have liked it to be, if not for those dastardly homologation requirements.

The M2 CS rides on shorter, firmer coil springs than the standard car; has recalibrated adaptive dampers, power steering and rear differential; and stiffer engine mounts than the standard car, too.

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INTERIOR

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The M2 CS’s cabin remains surprisingly practical. BMW hasn’t got into chucking out back seats in order to save weight here; so there’s still room for four adults of average height to travel - just about - with access to the back seats being a little bit of a squeeze, but no more so than owners of fairly compact two-door coupes will be used to.

The car gets the M Carbon bucket seats and carbon trim that were offered as part of the M Race Track Pack on the standard M2. The front seats are a little bit of a squeeze, and support your thighs and shoulders pretty snugly, in a way that might become a bit tiring for those who use their car every day; but, for more occasional use, they’d be comfortable enough. However, the annoying offset pedal placement issue that forces you to crank your accelerator-pedal ankle to quite a wide angle - or else accept a seat cushion bolster that constantly digs into your right thigh - remains.

Because they didn’t do any silly chucking out of back seats, this remains a really usable four-seater with a proper boot. The M Carbon front buckets might irk you if you daily-drove one; likewise, the lack of a cupholder. But I think I’d find a way to cope.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

There are plenty of special design touches to admire. Ambient-lit CS logos in the door panels that light up in various colours after dark, but retain a carbonfibre look in sunlight. A lightweight, stripped-back carbonfibre transmission tunnel console, with CS badging embossed here and there. A little annoyingly, the latter robs you of any kind of cupholder - but plenty of stimulants other than caffeine are in generous supply.

There’s no shortage of physical switchgear, either. Being a modern M car, the M2 CS gives you so many buttons for switching and managing its various assistance systems and drive modes that you shouldn’t really try to become familiar with them while driving. Once you are familiar with them, however, what seemed undeniably complicated at first becomes a lot more straightforward.

Yes, there’s a lot of choice in the menu calibration of your steering, gearbox, engine, suspension damping and stability control preferences to ponder; but the M1 and M2 buttons on the steering wheel really do make it much easier than you might imagine to refine and ‘save’ permutations of these as you drive, so you don’t feel like alighting on the perfect combination of this and that is left to chance.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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The M2 CS’s firmer suspension springs and engine mounts make it feel sharper, rawer, tinglier and more forthcoming than a normal M2 in just about everything it does; and very seldom ordinary in any way, on any route you might take with it.

The car’s straight six vibrates its perfect-balance character into the cabin that bit more clearly, and lends the car a more dramatic persona, than a standard M2 as soon as you fire it up.

Running at the same state of tune at which it powers the M3- and M4 Competition, it doesn’t seem particularly highly strung; doesn’t struggle with latency when responding to the accelerator; and retains that wonderfully smooth, big-chested, linear- and unburstible-feeling mid range delivery as it revs. It also keeps working freely way up beyond 6000rpm. So it can be extended as far as you might need on track without punishing you for not hooking an upshift at just the right time; and isn’t fussy if you happen to skip a downshift on approach to a tighter bend, pulling from low revs just as willingly. It's a belting engine.

In terms of outright pace, the CS’s 523bhp and 479lb ft are made to feel like the result of even bigger hikes in output by its weight savings. And weight remains on this car’s side when you consider that BMW doesn’t offer rear-wheel drive versions of the larger M4 to UK buyers anymore; and that makes the M2 CS a good 150kg lighter than its bigger sibling, which is a big enough difference to feel pretty much anywhere.

On the road, the car’s much quicker than you’re likely to be able to tap into very freely; but not so fast that fully uncorking now and again feels utterly antisocial. But even on the track, it piles on speed with the appetite of lots of more expensive trackday fayre, and wouldn’t feel lost on big, wide tracks with long, testing straights. 

Against the clock, this is the only M2 capable of 62mph from rest in less than 4.0sec. It’s clearly not a car that BMW M has been concerned about shaking up the performance hierarchy of its coupe models with, if only for a while; which is just another reason to like it.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Precision, fluency and tactile feedback characterise a great deal about the M2 CS on the road. In so many ways, it addresses shortcomings in the regular M2 that somehow you’d only got glimpses of hitherto - but suddenly recognise all the same.

Even at normal speeds, CS’s steering has the feel, fluency and crispness that standard M2’s, at times, lacks; and so you can guide the car with a confident precision at least a couple of notional levels greater. That little bit of excess, occasional squatting body movement over bumps that a regular M2 has? Gone. The CS is all composure and tautness compared with the regular M2’s jauntier and more characterful long-wave stride. Big, sudden inputs make it bristle and grab a bit; but, over more typical lumps and bumps, it takes a lot to disturb it.

The CS’s chassis is flatter but also keener. On track, it takes a cornering line quicker than the regular M2, and feels even more adjustable on the throttle when you start to investigate just how often, how controllably, and how indulgently the car will slither its way through a bend. 

It’s got power and response to burn in any of its lower intermediate gears; so that when you do want to ‘animate’ its rear-drive chassis, it’s blissfully easy. But thanks to BMW’s excellent - if slightly intimidatingly complex - array of drive modes and stability control settings, there’s nothing to fear from it if you just want ‘fast, composed, honest and secure’ instead. 

The one word of warning concerns tyre choice. BMW offers the car on three grades of tyres; Michelin Pilot Cup 2s are the default pick, with Pilot Sport rubber at one end of the choice spectrum, and very track-focussed Cup 2 Rs at the other. The Cups would be great, no doubt, on a dry Brands Hatch for those who like top-level track pace; but they do make the car a bit of a handful on a wintery mountain pass. We'd recommend picking the Pilot Sports for a car that'll cope admirably whatever you happen to throw at it.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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The £92,000 UK asking price of the BMW M2 CS clearly doesn't make it cheap. Add the optional carbon-ceramic brakes, as plenty will, and this becomes a £100,000 car. But considering that a regular M2, fitted with BMW's M Race Track Pack (carbon roof, sporty buckets, etc; which the M2 CS effectively gets as standard) is a £79,000 car in itself certainly puts a positive spin on its sense of performance value.

This certainly certainly delivers plenty of pace, desirability and usability for a five-figure outlay. Considering its new and enhanced, top-level tactile and wider sensory qualities as a driver's car - and just how much fun it could be on road and track - it isn't hard to make the case that it's worth its sticker price; especially in light of what you can spend in 2025 on less forthcoming, truly special performance cars.

Meanwhile, the car's straight six will happily settle down and cruise at 35mpg on the motorway, putting 350 miles between tank-fills.

VERDICT

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The BMW M2 CS is the front-engined, rear-drive, compact, classic M car made modern; but done with a reverent, vivid, captivating brilliance that doesn’t come along routinely, even when Garching rolls out special letters. 

The pace and positivity of the car’s steering - not to mention the potency of its turbocharged mid-range power delivery, the outright precision and composure of its chassis, and the fact that it doesn’t have an absolutely rubbish automated manual gearbox - distort comparisons with the much-exalted E46 M3 CSL. And yet you can’t help making them.

The dynamic heights to which this car has been taken bring to mind some of the M Division’s very rarest and most memorable successes. It bears comparison with the greatest driver’s cars on sale right now; and you could have two of them for the price of one averagely equipped Porsche 911 GT3.

Anyone still feeling cynical? I very much hope not.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.