Video: the BMW M4 GTS has 493bhp, does proper sideways

As news goes, the fact a near-500bhp rear-drive sports car drifts is not hugely revelatory. But the sight of not one, but two BMW M4 GTSs balletically sliding around a slimy circuit is still a sight to behold, as the video above will attest.

It seems BMW remembers the M3 GTS as fondly as we do, and the name badge is back, albeit on the renamed M4 Coupe. The harder-faster philosophy, though, is carried over untouched.

The M4 GTS debuts at the Tokyo motor show at the end of the month, and - compared to the stock M4 - power is up, weight is down, while there’s a less-than-subtle rear wing atop the boot lid.

The M4’s 3.0-litre twin-turbo six-cylinder engine remains, now making 493bhp – up 68bhp on the standard M4 – thanks to a water-injection system that permits the turbos to work better.

Essentially water is sprayed into the engine to cool things down – old Mitsubishi Evos did something similar – with a small tank stored in the boot. On a trackday you might need to top it up a couple of times, but under normal use it should be less high maintenance. We tried the system recently in the Moto GP safety car, which you can read here.

Mated only to BMW’s paddleshift auto, the performance benefits are notable: half a second has been lopped off the M4's 0-62mph time, which now stands at 3.8 secs, while the top speed is now 190mph, up from a limited 155. The obligatory ‘Ring time is 7min 28sec: a quite staggering 24 seconds quicker than a regular M4 and the same as Walter Rohrl’s time in a Porsche Carrera GT. Senior.

Such success is no doubt helped along by weight-saving measures which include the ditching of the back seats, the front two being replaced with carbon fibre buckets, and thinner doors, which get 911 GT3-style pull straps in place of handles inside. The kerbweight of the M4 GTS now stands at 1,510kg, a 62kg drop on standard.

There’s an optional roll cage and six-point harnesses for the seats, if trackdays are your bag, while nerdier still is manually adjustable suspension, if you’re handy with the spanners. Carbon-ceramic brakes are standard, and the steering has been altered for more feel over the regular M4.

The exterior betrays everything beneath it with a bold body kit. The carbon front splitter and big rear spoiler the highlights, the latter adjustable through three heights if those spanners are still lying around. And while the M4 GTS hasn’t gone the whole hog with a lurid orange hue like its glorious M3 ancestor, there are splashes of the colour all over, the wheels most notable.

LED lights are used front and rear, BMW particularly proud of the set at the back, which debut its ‘OLED’ tech, an organic version of LED lights (nope, us neither) which essentially allows fancier designs of light to amuse old Walter once you've overtaken his Porsche.

And now for the sucker punch: just 700 M4 GTSs will be made during a one-year production run, nearly half of them going to the US and just 30 coming to the UK. Even if you’re hasty, there’s one final hurdle to leap: a £121,770 price tag, which is more than twice the price of a basic M4. And that means there's a quarter of a million quid's worth of M4 squirming around in the video above...

[apester:56150a7cc70ac51c03e72e63]