If you open the right doors and walk down the right corridors deep inside BMW M’s engineering headquarters in Munich, you will eventually stumble upon Room X (we can’t know its real name so this is what I propose we call it for now). Inside this long, brightly lit and sterile space, you’ll find row upon row of wardrobe-sized pods, like little spaceships queuing for take-off. They are cryogenic freezers, cold enough to freeze blood.
Inside, awaiting reanimation every few months or so, are BMW M’s very best engineers. They are the talented few capable of producing the division’s finest work. Mostly they sit frozen in time, suspended, motionless, facial expressions perfectly impassive. But any time there’s a new CS derivative in need of a chassis tune, the thawing process begins.
I may have one or two details wrong, but I reckon that’s the gist of it. It’s certainly the impression I get any time I drive a CS. Typically the changes over and above the standard models look small on the page but turn out to be substantial, sometimes transformative on the road. They’re just better than other M-cars, without benefiting from any major mechanical upgrades. It was true of the M5 CS of 2021, the car that – and there should be a sizeable SPOILER ALERT right here – we declared the greatest M5 of all time just last summer. It was also true of the recent M4 CS, about which Andrew wrote one of his most glowing reviews of the year so far. The new M2 CS will hit our roads in the next couple of months, and hopes are high.
