The fastest M car is coming to NZ. Is it is set to be too good to risk putting on the road?

THE kilos are pared, the power has climbed, the Nurburgring lap time is incredibly gloatworthy and the rarity value is set to go through the roof.

There’s good chance the BMW M4 CSL, the most vicious and fastest roadgoing car from Munich ever, developed to celebrate this being M’s 50th year of business, might go straight into a lucky owner’s air conditioned, humidity-controlled, high-security pool room when it arrives in New Zealand later this year.

The national distributor says price and the allocation count of a model announced internationally and built to celebrate this being a big M birthday year won’t be announced for some time yet.

Expect the first to be very high … and the second to be very low.

Just 1000 are being built after it launches in July, which means this country even getting a look-in is incredible. Assuredly, though, there’s high possibility we might be thinking of a number between one and, hmmm, maybe three.

CSL is shorthand for “Competition, Sport, Lightweight.” The type is a rare sub-genre dating back to hotted up and lightened Beamers dating back to the 3.0 CSL “Batmobile” of the 1970s.

The new M4 CSL uses the same twin-turbo S58 inline-six as the Competition but gets a 30 kiloWatt bump over the M4 Competition and goes on a 110kg diet. The result is a 0-100kmh time of 3.6 seconds. It’ll also run to 200kmh in a supercar-like 11.5 seconds and wind all the way to a gulpworthy 305kmh.

The M4 CSL effectively runs the same engine as the racing-only M4 GT3 but without the track model’s dry-sump oil system. The key to the power hike is partly due to the new exhaust but mostly due to M moving the maximum turbo boost pressure from 1.7 bar to 2.1 bar.

The race cars run manuals. Not this CSL. It has an eight-speed automatic transmission, which can cope comfortably with the 650Nm of torque (unchanged from the M4 Competition).

The model delivers massive suspension revisions, including lowering the ride height via new springs, to cope with the extra grip from the Michelin Cup2R tires, which run to 275/35 ZR19 rubber upfront and 285/30 ZR20s at the rear.

There will only be three colours—this Frozen Brooklyn Grey metallic paint, plus Black Sapphire and Alpine White. Brake calipers are painted red.

Oh yes, that all-important Nurburgring Nordschleife lap time? A very serious seven minutes and 15.677 seconds.