BMW M2 CS review: brilliant, with one obvious problem

Ducktail bootlid? 

Check.

Y-spoke alloy wheels?

More angular than the beautiful rims on the E46 M3 CS or the F82 M4 CS, but yep – check.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Lashings of carbon fibre and suede inside?

Check-checkity-check. It can only mean one thing: a new BMW M Division CS model has come among us. Welcome to the new M2 CS.

And what sort of car is the new M2 CS?

It’s a fit M2. An M2 that’s been tweaked, optimised, refined, and sharpened. This isn’t an extreme track special.

It has holes in the bucket seats, but no harnesses. There are back seats, and beneath the gorgeous carbon fibre bootlid, a huge cargo area. In fact, besides the rubbery front splitter, the taller tail lip, those fussy wheels and the red badges, there’s little to tell an M2 CS from a normal M2. No big aero or livery clues.

If you’re a BMW geek supreme, you’ll spot extra traces of M car lore. The clear-coat carbon roof, which helps toward a 30kg weight saving. The barely slatted intakes up front, which leave the radiator horribly exposed to flicked up grit. Get right up close with a tape measure – you weirdo – and you’ll spot the CS rides 8mm lower to the ground. But to find anything else different, you need to get inside.

And what will I discover?

First, that your elbow hurts, because as usual, BMW has binned the central armrest for the CS, to save 0.00002 grammes. So there’s nowhere to comfortably lean, or to hide your phone and wallet. Great.

Then your knuckles start to ache because the steering wheel is a vast, obscenely thick wrong 'un made of a police dog’s chew toy. Why, BMW, why? It’s dreadful.

The seats are M Division’s semi-extreme hole-y buckets with the carbon speed bump between your legs. All the dash trim is carbon. The cabin is basically wholesale nicked from the M4 CS, apart from the strange throbbing ‘CS’ logos which pulse in the doors. It feels expensively put together and appropriately stripped-out – because there are no buttons. All the functionality lives in the curved screen atop the dash.

So far, I’m not sensing why I’ve got an £87,000 bill.

Start the engine and the M2 CS starts to pay you back. The 3.0-litre twin-turbo straight six is allowed to creep up to M4 specification, so you finally get the 523bhp and 479lb ft we knew the M2 could juggle all along. That’s a 40bhp and 36lb ft rise from the standard M2.

And that explains why the car is automatic gearbox-only. BMW detunes the standard M2’s engine for less torque if you want a manual. That wasn’t going to sit right with the CS, so it’s got the eight-speed torque-convertor auto and Lego paddleshifters.

Boo! Save the manuals!

Are you sure? Trust us, this engine works better with the auto. It chomps hard through the first few closely stacked ratios. Seamless redline shifts keep the twin-boosted engine in the sweet spot. Besides, BMW’s manual doesn’t have the gorgeous mechanical precision of a Honda Type R or Porsche Cayman stick-shift, so don’t let the two-pedal set-up put you off.

I presume the auto means it’s faster too?

Yep, faster shift times plus the power dump and enhanced traction to actually use it thanks to optional stickier tyres knock 0.2 sec from the M2’s 0-62mph sprint.

This is a properly fast small (okay, medium) car: 0-62mph is dusted in 3.8 seconds. Tick the limit-riser option box and it’ll go all the way to 188mph. That’s what the specs say. How it feels is what matters. And this feels like a fast car. An M2 that totally shrugs off any remaining complaints about its portly 1,695kg weight, in a straight line at least.

The car now has the pace we always knew this more mature second-gen M2 could easily absorb, surging through the mid-range with authority yet managing to put down the power more neatly than the standard M2, which can get scrappy and out of sync with itself if you’re really legging it on track.

And so, to the handling.

Here’s the short version in case you’re in a hurry. The M2 CS is an extremely well sorted sports car, and you can impose yourself on it. It can be neat, tidy and precise, or it’ll be a complete yob.

If you’ve got time, things are a bit more complicated. And German.

Was ist das?

BMW head office insisted we could only drive the M2 CS on track if it was fitted with optional Cup 2R tyres. And that before lapping, they were subjected to a warm-up cycle.

You know the one. Five stops from 120mph to 15mph of steadily increasing urgency. And then a visit to the pits to adjust the pressures. Just like you do every time you head for your favourite B-road... and just see how performing five emergency stops goes down on your next trackday.

In fairness, once the chewing gum tyres are above 50 degrees Celsius they stick like an embarrassing nickname. The CS is so locked down, so relentlessly grippy, it’s as though that kick-up bootlid is generating a tonne of unseen downforce. If lap times are your thing, you’ll love how hard you can lean on the front end, how the molten rubber allows mid-corner steering adjustments and will let you stamp on the throttle stupidly early.

For five laps or so. Then you’ll need a new set. But that’s not putting anyone off – BMW UK says over half of M2 CS orders will ship with racing boots on.

Isn’t fitting trackday tyres sorta… cheating?

They’ll make anything – even a rusty Transit van – feel like it’s been to Nürburgring finishing school. Which is why we also tested the very same CS on technical, yumpy Portugese roads on regular Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres. They’re basically the benchmark fast road car tyre – an industry standard. If the CS became a wayward mess, we’d know the trick tyres had been writing cheques the chassis can’t cash.

This is all very nerdy, Top Gear…

It is. Sorry. Blame the Germans and their draconian tyre decree. Irony is, they needn’t have bothered. The regular tyres didn’t morph the M2 CS into a petulant, spiky widowmaker, or a wallowy, understeering 1970s American barge. It still gripped, stopped and turned with tenacity, vigour and poise. Only, it was wrigglier under power, in an alive, entertaining way. And it even rode better.

Sport Plus suspension is likely to be too abrupt for UK roads, but the CS devoured some gnarly Algarve back lanes in Sport mode, which supports the still hefty body with sumptuous control but isn’t so rigid the wheels spend more time dangling in the air than smearing 523bhp onto the road.

But having lived with a regular BMW M2 for half a year, the improvements to the CS are very clever. It doesn’t feel compromised, like its operating window has been narrowed. But its responses are sharper, the whole car more willing – more of an extension of your body.

What are the rivals?

A funeral party. Seriously, they’re all dead. 

Porsche Cayman? Nope. Production of the 718 has ceased (sob). Porsche is playing heiße Kartoffel with how electric its replacement might be. It’s currently delayed until mid-2027.

Will the other sub-£100k sports cars please stand up?

AMG has given up. Nissan GT-R: RIP. The Alpine A110 is not long for this world and despite anyone who’s ever driven one – from everyone at TG to James May and Gordon Murray – lavishing it with praise, it sells in small numbers. 

The only sort-of rival the M2 CS has is the Lotus Emira, which looks fabulous but wouldn’t see which way the BMW had gone - with its back seat, big boot and enormous dealer network too.

So the BMW M2 CS is the winner in a class of one?

A brilliant car, no doubt. Its only true obstacle is itself. Its price: it’s obscene. £87,000 is a giant stack of money for a 2 Series. With ceramic brakes like the one we drove, it’s £96,000. So the result is another M car many will rightly admire, but few can realistically aspire to.