Car Review: 2025 BMW M4 CS | Reviews

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Visiting a new restaurant and deciding what to order is often an exercise in contextual knowledge. Say you scan the menu and see that a porterhouse steak is offered, you may have never eaten here before and thus, you don’t know how well — or not well — this restaurant prepares its steak. You don’t know if it’s their rare or your rare, or if the porterhouse they claim to be 16 ounces is really a pound of Grade A beef.

Regardless, you have eaten a steak before. That experience combined with your initial assessment of the restaurant will allow you to pretty accurately assume what that meal will look like when it comes to your table. There are white table cloths and a waiter, so it will surely be a nicer steak than one served with eggs at Denny’s.

In the same way, I had never driven a BMW M4 CS before I tested one for this review. But I had driven BMWs before and from the CS’s spot at the very top of the M4 performance lineup, I assumed it would be the most pure and exciting M4 one could buy.

 It didn’t come out of the kitchen quite how I expected.

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2025 BMW M4 trims

The M4 is BMW’s performance model for the 4-series coupe and there are multiple M4 variants to choose from. Interestingly, the base M4 is only offered with a manual transmission and rear-wheel-drive. That makes it the only M4 variant currently offered with a manual in North America. It makes 473 horsepower, does 0-100 km/h in 4.2 seconds and will cost you $94,300. Up from that we have the M4 Competition. The M4 ‘Comp’ is only offered with an automatic transmission and all-wheel-drive. It gets a sizeable 50-horsepower power bump to 523, and that power increase along with the AWD system allow it to blast to 100 km/h in just 3.5 seconds. You’ll pay $101,200 for the privilege of doing so.

And, at the very top of the menu we have our subject car — the wagyu beef cut of M4s if you will — the M4 CS. The M4 and M4 Competition are “regular production” cars in that BMW will simply build as many as buyers are willing to take. The M4 CS is a true limited production item; just 1,700 are being sold globally and of those, only 75 are coming to Canada.

The CS is essentially based on the M4 Competition and like the Comp, is only available with AWD and an automatic transmission. The turbocharged 3.0L inline-six has been bumped up 20 horsepower from the Comp for a total of 543 hp. It’s worth noting that to achieve this number, BMW didn’t make any hardware changes and simply turned up the boost pressure.

Underhood, that tuned engine is framed by an impressively large one-piece cast-aluminum brace which ties together the front shock towers and core support in one rigid group. Lesser M4s use a steel arrangement made from three separate braces which I presume would be heavier and less resistant to flexing. Once combusted, spent fuel is escorted outside through a special, valved silencer which is made from titanium to shave about four kilograms from the car’s curb weight.

Less visible, the various systems of the CS have been tuned and optimized for more intense use. The transfer case has a revised oiling system for sustained high-G loads during track use, the adaptive dampers have recalibrated damping, and the various traction control modes have been re-programmed to allow more slip. If you really want to slip and slide, you can electronically uncouple the drive to the front wheels to make the M4 CS rear-wheel drive.

The visual calling card of the M4 CS is the striped carbon-fiber hood which is unique to the CS and not optional on other M4 models. The lightweight hood does legitimately shave weight off the front of the car (25% lighter than the standard M4 hood). But this functional carbon piece is accompanied by more decorative bits like carbon-fiber mirror caps, fender vents, front splitter, rear diffuser and trunklid-mounted spoiler. The forged aluminum wheels are also a CS exclusive and are available either in matte gold which looks excellent or matte black if you are a bad, boring person. Up front, the CS uses a unique “frameless” grille design trimmed with red accents and that grille is set in between unique daytime running lights that glow yellow instead of white. The “Frozen Isle of Man Green” paint on our test car doesn’t make it go any faster but it certainly looks faster when painted this color or the similarly striking Riviera Blue. Both of these colours are exclusive to the CS and complement the aggressive bodywork well.

The carbon continues inside the CS where carbon shift paddles (with red rubber backing for your fingers) flank an alcantara steering wheel complete with the oh-so-fashionable red stripe at 12 o’clock. You’ll find the centre console and dashboard accent strip wearing legit carbon fiber as well. No fake carbon here! Carbon-fiber-backed bucket seats are standard and come in a striking red/black colour combination regardless of the exterior colour specified. Other than a few well-placed CS logos, the interior is much the same as you’d find in an M4 Comp.

How much is the 2025 BMW M4 CS in Canada?

For all these upgrades and the exclusivity of a limited production model, a CS owner will hand over $150,000. That’s a $48,800 premium over the already not-very-cheap M4 Competition. But is it worth the spend to have the baddest M4 you can buy? It is, after all, the most expensive item on the menu from a company famed for building sporty coupes. 

As you slide into those science-fiction seats with sculpted cutouts in the backrest, you certainly feel special as you look around at all the carbon fiber in the interior. The exterior and interior of the CS have sufficient differences from standard to truly make each drive feel a little special.

How does it drive?

Around town, the turbocharged six idles impatiently through its titanium exhaust, imploring you to take it somewhere it can really run. Indulge that urge, and on proper backroads the CS is lightning quick. If you engage the dramatic launch control function you can propel yourself to 100 km/h in just 3.4 seconds which is one tenth quicker than an M4 Competition. At full throttle, noise fills the cabin but it sounds a little too perfect and I suspect it may be artificial. Worse yet, it’s the first signal that there may be some less-than-flattering aspects to your vision of the CS as the ultimate in M4s.

The steering is surprisingly numb and devoid of feel for such a focused car. I understand that it’s tough to maintain tactile steering feel while sending that much power through the front axle, but the M4 CS steering has less detail and feel than a few high-end video game racing rigs I have tried. Using the sport settings increases the steering weight but the clarity of communication from the road through the wheel to your palms never actually improves regardless of drive mode.

Then there’s the rock-hard suspension. You could hardly accuse any of the recent M models for being too plush and predictably, the CS model uses even stiffer springs than the regular M4. The ride is bone-crushingly stiff and the hardcore carbon seats exacerbate this. On anything but the smoothest pavement, the CS crashes over bumps and skips over rippled pavement like a stone.

Now to be fair, I actually would not have a huge problem with this crashy ride if the CS was a laser-focused track machine like a Porsche RS. And from its lofty perch at the very top of the M4 lineup you may think that the CS is the RS of the M4 set.

 You’d be wrong.

You could be forgiven for thinking the CS was a track-focused car which logically compromises street comfort for lap times. It uses a very aggressive factory tire, it has lightweight components like the carbon hood and roof, carbon buckets inside, and an AWD system that can put all of the power down to the road (or track).

But in direct opposition to this idea, are the many comfort and convenience items found in the CS. It has power seats, heated seats, premium audio, and the inclusion of a rear seat. Even though there is a carbon spoiler affixed to the trunk lid, the CS has a power-closing trunk! The CS shaves a commendable 77 lbs from the M4 Comp but still ends up being 73 lbs heavier than the standard M4! The CS weighs within 46 lbs of a Dark Horse Mustang! Does BMW not know how to make a steak?

BMW had the opportunity to do something truly great here. With just 1,700 units to sell and a nearly $49,000 premium per car, they could have gone crazy with the CS and had no issues selling every single one. For example it is absurd to me that carbon ceramic brakes are a $10,000 option on the CS and not standard. You may remember that BMW did go crazy when they made the limited run M4 CSL in 2023. That car was limited to 1,000 units and sold for $166,500 back then. Thanks to using RWD, removing the rear seat, and copious carbon fiber, BMW managed to drop the weight to 320 lbs less than a CS weighs. The CSL had a purpose: it was the driver’s M4. It compromised on comfort and 0-60 times to deliver a pure driving experience.

It seems BMW was very conscious of the CSL and were cautious not to fly too close to it, lest they anger the collectors. If the CSL was the nostalgic RWD pure experience, the CS could have been the lightweight AWD special aimed at absolutely smashing lap times. But instead, the CS tries to be both lap-time warrior and usable daily vehicle and in my opinion, doesn’t excel in either. What we have is a car that is deeply uncomfortable to drive on real roads, offers hardly any tactile communication in driving it, and one that weighs nearly as much as a V8 Mustang.

So then, what is the CS for?

Pondering this from my porch overlooking my driveway, a group of young men walking by were immediately arrested by the green paint and carbon fiber as if the CS was a movie star. Chatting with them, I was surprised to learn that they knew exactly what the CS was and that it was a dream car for all of them. A man at a gas station asked me if it was a racing car. Another guy was so smitten with the car that he offered to detail it, for free, simply to put his hands on it.

During my week with the CS I vaguely experienced what it would be like to be an attractive celebrity. Men approached me every time I stopped. I was unable to fill up with gas without a short and fun conversation about the car. Photos were snapped of the car in my driveway and in traffic. And it finally made the CS make sense to me.

I think that the CS exists to absolutely dominate cars and coffee. The gold wheels, the striped carbon hood, space-age uncomfortable seats, and super cool styling touches make it irresistible to the Instagram set. I tried to explain to these admirers that the seats were uncomfortable and that the car was far too heavy for one with such sporting pretense. Reader, they did not care; they were in love. The CS is what we want a dream car to be. It’s memorable, dramatic, beautiful, and in some ways extreme. And viewed through this lens, you get a lot of clout and exclusivity for $150k. This seems like a lot of money until you realize that the most boring and basic 911 you can buy new starts at $159,322 and is basically invisible.

Final thoughts

The M4 CS certainly did not come out of the kitchen the way I expected it. Is this because BMW has simply forgotten the recipe of how to make a focused sports coupe? This feels unlikely considering it came out with the focused and brilliant M4 CSL just a few years prior. 

I think BMW knows exactly how to cook a steak but it is also very in tune with what its customers actually want. The CS gives people what they want from this type of car. It’s dramatic, it looks fast, and it gives a sense of occasion. In the end, I learned that we all derive joy from cars in different ways. The 1,700 lucky souls to have CS keys in their Faraday box will not give one single damn about my grumpiness. They’ll be smitten. The 2025 BMW M4 CS excels at its intended purpose. It draws a crowd, it invites stares, it creates moments, it sparks joy. And I can’t be mad at that.

Pros and cons of the 2025 BMW M4 CS

Pros

✔ Arresting appearance
✔ Genuine exclusivity
✔ Impressive speed

Cons

✘ Unforgiving ride
✘ Numb steering
✘ Lack of focus

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