The new CSL’s standard-fit racing bucket seats are apparently quite uncompromising (you’ll need to return to the dealer’s workshop if you want their height adjusted), but our test car had BMW’s regular M Carbon buckets instead (the same ones which are optional on an M3- or M4 Competition, with seat heaters and electric adjustment).
The interior is awash with special styling touches and racy materials, but it isn’t so stripped out as to feel sparse. All of the digital infotainment features of a regular M4 are included (you can even have a head-up display if you like). But there are no Porsche RS-style belt-pull door releases, there’s no fire extinguisher – and there’s no roll cage even as an option. Could this be BMW hinting that, in contrast to an M4 GTS or certain key trackday rivals, the CSL is intended as a fast road car first and a track car second? That it isn’t so interested in gestures of circuit preparedness that owners might seldom actually need? It would make a pleasant and pragmatic change, I must say; and it’d be typical of the M Division to make it.
On the road, the CSL has a good dose of the unfiltered road- and mechanical noise, and that rawness of feel, you expect of it – but mostly it’s not that imposing. Stiffened engine mounts and a slightly snatchy calibration for the car’s eight-speed automatic gearbox teach you to be smooth and deliberate with the accelerator at low speeds, and wise with your gearshift timing. There’s plenty of snarling menace about that higher-boost-pressure, twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre straight six, and lots of knobbly patter and ride noise from the now largely rigid-mounted axles.
Any yet, with its adaptive dampers set to soft, this is a remarkably supple road car. It rides 8mm lower than a regular M4, using all-new struts with both main and helper springs, and new anti-roll bars. And yet it feels taut but fluent on most surfaces, leaving you feeling like you’re riding along on some perfectly tensioned bowstring.