| Autocar

Posted: 14 May 2014 08:03 AM PDT

The BMW M4, like so many M3 coupés before it, is a remarkably good sports car – particularly when you consider that, in the strictest terms, it's not quite a sports car at all.

Or rather, not just a sports car. Here is a car saddled with a yolk of complication, contradiction and duplicity heavy enough to drag a lesser machine deep into the bowels of averageness. And yet its outstanding appeal to performance car aficionados is as clear and compelling today as that of any M3 was before it.

Deputy road test editor

To begin with, you expect everything and nothing. As a successor to a line of four M3 coupés, at least two of which deserve to be lauded as true sporting greats, the M4 has quite a legend to live up to. But it's also a total unknown.

For a while, we'll all think of this as 'the new M3' – even though there's another new M3 with four doors and a marginally less attractive body. BMW expects that the saloon will be only fractionally as popular as the M4; time will tell if the lure of the M3 badge alone will have anything to say about that.

So, welcome the M4. We'll get used to that. And even before we have, because of the greatness of this car's predecessors, we'll wonder how far above and beyond its own limitations an M4 can transcend.

Is it reasonable to expect this car to hit the dynamic high notes of, say, a generously configured Porsche Cayman S or a Jaguar F-type V6 S coupé? Given its price and pedigree, yes, absolutely.

But the more you think about that question, the less sure you'll be. Purpose-built sports cars by Porsche and Lotus, for example, aren't generally adapted from the relatively ordinary beginnings from which an M4 starts its life. They're not expected to be usable enough to make flexible everyday transport, or to seat two or three passengers with room for luggage as well, or be civilised and sensible enough for the daily grind.

They don't, in short, have anything like as many masters to serve as this BMW M-car. And if they did, would they be as fast and sweet-handling as an M4?

By fast, what we're describing here is by some distance the biggest-hitting compact M-car there has ever been. Twin turbocharging delivers the necessary torque to propel this car from low engine speeds with an urgency that its atmospheric-engined antecedents could only match when screaming away above 6000rpm.

The resultant claim is that this car can cover a standing kilometre in just a shade over 22se, or a shade under if you opt for the seven-speed M-DCT dual-clutch automatic transmission.

The last compact M-car with forced induction – the 1M Coupé – took almost two seconds longer to cover that distance when we road tested it. The last, V8-powered M3? Just under a second and a half slower, according to our numbers.

As you'd expect, the 0-62mph sprint is dispatched in a similarly short amount of time – 4.3 seconds, to be exact – and the top speed is, as ever, limited to 155mph.

This outright potency is double-edged. It manifests itself as both easy tractability on the road when you're not hurrying along, and a powerful back massage delivered by a sculpted Dakota leather sports seat when you are.

In the lower intermediate gears the M4 takes off from below 3000rpm with real force, and, while its power delivery doesn't build to a toe-curling crescendo like naturally aspirated M3s once did, that 3.0-litre straight six will happily keep on revving and giving until the far side of 7500rpm. BMW claims 425bhp from 5500-7300rpm, and 406lb ft from 1850-5500rpm.

So the M4's engine has incredible range and linearity. Accelerator response is good, too. It's not razor-sharp, granted, and it comes with a tiny bit of softness in the initial take-up, but it's good enough that you can forget the turbos are there most of the time, if you want to.

All it's missing, really, is a bit of theatre. At bumbling speeds, there's precious little character or charm to the noise those quad tailpipes produce – even when it's amplified, augmented and reproduced by the car's stereo speakers.

You need a fast-flowing mountain road – or better still, a circuit – to bring this car to life and to appreciate the handling it's capable of. When you do, you'll find that the M4's chassis is outstanding. It's also considerably more delicate and precise than that of your typical performance derivative, thanks to the thoroughness of BMW M division's engineering overhaul.

Lightweight forged arms and links predominate, while rigidity is added all over the car – via aluminium and carbonfibre bracing, new extra-strong suspension mounts, a carbonfibre prop shaft… the list goes on.

This may be the first M-car in history with electromechanical power steering, but you just wouldn't know it. Steering weight can be varied through the Drive Performance Control system, as ever, and there's useful tactile feedback through the rim in Sport and Sport+ modes. The rack itself is well paced at straight-ahead and picks up speed quickly off centre, but at all times it's incredibly precise.

What's more, directional response in the car is absolutely perfect – almost telepathic. There's just no perceptible delay or lost motion at any point in your typical cornering routine.

Turn the wheel. Feel the front wheels biting hard instantly and guiding the car towards the apex in perfect proportion to your input. Then sense the back ones gripping just as hard, following almost exactly in the tyre tracks of the fronts and stabilising the car mid-bend. Or, as you grow in confidence, adjusting your attitude with power, perhaps, and doing it so accurately you'd swear it could almost be by the degree.

Precision is the resounding hallmark of the BMW's driving experience, which feels both highly developed and hugely interactive. Ironically perhaps, the car isn't the most benign drift machine you might expect it to be, demanding just as much smoothness, judiciousness and precision from your corrections and adjustments as it gives back.

Once you've processed that and learned delicacy with the steering wheel and restraint with the accelerator, a great deal of on-the-limit fun can be had on a wide circuit. But just as much fun can be teased out of five degrees of slip angle around a well sighted third-gear corner on your favourite road – and that much can be called up instantly, delicately, and with the DSC safety still on in the background.

On top of which, the M4 is also a very reasonable cruiser; it'll do 30mpg when called upon, easily go for more than 300 miles between fills and its back seats and boot are a good size. Over distance, the production of quite a bit of road noise is the only disappointment. The M-DCT gearbox is worth paying extra for and shifts just as smoothly in laid-back mode as it can quickly when you're charging on. Likewise, the cabin is comfortable, rich and packed with kit.

History may not judge this as the greatest driver's car that BMW's M division has ever built. Sacrifices have been made in the name of false idols, many will say – emissions being the biggest fraud among them.

Still, the M4 has the sheer performance and dynamic genius to earn it huge credibility and a ranking place alongside the very best new driver's cars in the real world.

And specifically for people who owned the last M3 – which was thirsty, short of range, woolly helmed and slow at middling revs – it might be the perfect follow-on act.

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