For reasons we’ve just covered and others we’ll come to, this BMW M4 CSL seems less likely to appeal to a driver who needs to know that they are getting the lightest and most uncompromising track-ready sports car of its kind to part with the near-£130k sticker price. It still offers a great operating environment, though, and it’s a surprisingly habitable, comfortable and well-appointed place for any enthusiast driver to find him or herself in.
If you do want to maximise the car’s potential for lightness, you will need to stick with BMW’s standard-fit M Carbon Racing Bucket front seats, which by themselves deliver a sizeable chunk – 24kg – of the car’s overall weight saving. With a fixed backrest angle, no adjustable lumbar support and a manual base height adjustment that can only be set in the workshop, these seats were developed especially for the CSL. Our test car didn’t have them, though, coming instead with the M Carbon Bucket seats that are optional on the regular M4 Competition and with which we are already familiar. They may look particularly aggressive but are surprisingly comfortable and adjustable once you’re settled in.
CSL branding is used judiciously around the cabin, much of it backlit so it appeals all the more after dark. There’s a lightweight centre console made of CFRP but, contrary to what you might expect, it retains some useful storage space and is itself a welcome reminder, every time you glance down for the car’s gear selector, that you’re driving something so rare and special.
Otherwise, those neat but suspiciously tokenistic, track-day-kudos-conjuring design touches that cars such as this sometimes trade on – drawstring-style door handles, elastic-netted storage bin replacements, carbonfibre electric window switches, and the like – generally aren’t bothered with. That the CSL isn’t offered with either a fire extinguisher or a roll-cage tells you a great deal: this is a proper modern performance car fully fitted for regular use; a car clearly very ready for track use, but which, even before you’ve driven it, doesn’t seem easy to define in simple terms as a track car to the exclusion of any other role you might imagine for it.
In the rear cabin, where the back seats would otherwise be, you’ll find a netted storage area that’s plainly designed for a couple of crash helmets. But you might just as easily carry smaller items of luggage or shopping bags. And behind that, in the boot, cargo space is as generously supplied here as it is in any other M4.
Infotainment
While some CSL buyers might like the idea of a stripped-out cabin made as light and lean as possible, few would appreciate living with a £130,000 car without modern navigation or in-car entertainment systems. As such, the new M4 CSL doesn’t go without. If you want a car with wireless smartphone charging, a head-up display or BMW’s Parking Assistant system, you can have those features added, but even without them, the CSL doesn’t appear in the least bit sparsely equipped.
BMW’s Operating System 7.0 isn’t the company’s latest-generation infotainment set-up, as fitted to the likes of the iX and 7 Series, but it’s easy to navigate your way around when the car is on the move thanks to that tactile iDrive rotary input device. A wi-fi hotspot is included, as is Apple CarPlay and Android Auto mirroring functionality, and the former worked reliably and well during our testing.
BMW fits a 10–speaker, 205W sound system. Unusually in a modern BMW, it can’t be upgraded. Take that as a hint that you ought to be listening to the titanium exhaust instead.
