M5 CS is the most powerful M car ever

There’s another punch in store when you ask the price – £140,780, or around £40k more than the M5 Competition, until now the only version of the renowned fast four-door available to UK buyers. But in adhering to Club Sport principles, the latest CS version does come with a range of upgrades, as well as an exclusive four-bucket seat cabin.

More powerful, lighter and with a bespoke chassis set-up, carbon-ceramic brakes and carbon body parts, BMW says the M5 CS will be equally at home on road as track while remaining as practical for everyday use as ever. M5 business as usual, in other words.

To put some numbers behind those claims then: the twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 is tweaked to give its 635PS best at 6,000rpm, with a redline set at 7,200rpm. That’s 10PS more than the latest M5 Competition, but torque remains the same at 750Nm.

A larger number is the 70kg that BMW M division says it has shaved off the weight of the M5 Competition, itself already lightened over standard M5s sold elsewhere. Carbon-fibre reinforced plastic parts now constitute the bonnet, splitter, mirror housings, diffuser and rear spoiler. New brakes save a bunch of weight too as does having lightweight carbon buckets seats in the rear rather than the normal bench.

More power and less weight mean more accelerative ability for a car already acclaimed for its supercar performance. As you might expect improvements comes in mere tenths of a second – 0-62mph in 3.0 rather than 3.3 seconds, 0-124mph four-tenths faster at 10.4 seconds – but as long as they’re coming down rather than going up we’re happy. The top speed remains restricted to 189mph.

On road or track you should feel the CS difference: the ride height is dropped by 7mm, the engine mounts made stiffer and there is bespoke tuning of the four-wheel-drive system and active rear diff. A revised oil supply system has been designed to keep the V8 lubricated under racetrack conditions. Track driving, you may remember, was a priority for the facelifted M5 when that came out last summer, with its more rear-biased power delivery – including a rear-wheel-drive mode – all of which the CS inherits.

Ride and handling are also in line for a boost from new dampers: they have been passed to the M5 CS from the M8 Gran Coupe for which they were developed. As well as dropping the ride height and improving on-the-limit handling, they are said to aid comfort. Brakes on the CS are the M Carbon ceramics as standard, 23kg lighter than the M Compound brakes on the Competition model.

Also standard for your £140k are BMW Laserlight headlights, some pretty cool new matt paint finishes and an eye-catching interior with four individual M Carbon bucket-style seats, replete with illuminated M5 logos. Only the front ones are heated and adjust though. Cabin accents are in red, materials include Merino leather and Alcantara, and there are – of course – plenty of Nordschleife logos. There are also illuminated M5 CS badges in the treadplates and “gold bronze” accents to the quartet of exhaust tailpipes, kidney grille surround and gills on the front wings. Another way to tell a CS from a run of the mill M5 Competition is the Y-spoke design 20-inch forged alloy wheels wearing Pirelli P Zero Corsa tyres.

In short the CS is surely a summation of all that makes the M5 special. Order now in time for spring delivery. Miss out though and the M5 after this one might prove to be a rather different beast as some form of electrification moves in…