BMW M4 | Photo Credit: Prashant Shetty

Of late, BMW has been lenient with its ‘M Division’ nameplate. You’ll find an M mention as easily in its entry-level SUV as you will in many of its popular EVs. This, though, is the real deal. So much that it features the letter M twice. Meet the M4 Competition M xDrive Coupe.

Under its long, swooping bonnet lies a 3.0-litre straight-six engine with BMW’s TwinPower turbo trickery. That’s good enough for it to produce a heady 523 bhp made accessible via an 8-speed automatic transmission. There’s four-wheel drive, too, which you can turn off for when you’re feeling brave. And it’s got a charmingly vocal set of exhaust pipes (four) you can prompt to sing louder at the press of a button.

In BMW’s sportscar spectrum, the M4 Competition sits nearly all the way at the top, second only to the M4 CS. Since pretty much all BMWs are inherently fast, there may be an overlap or two from its four-door/SUV range, but as far as two-door coupes go, the M4 Competition is elite. It looks the part, too. I don’t think my neighbours are car enthusiasts, but I saw every single one of them pose for photos with it in the time I had it on test. The Fire Orange shade certainly helped.

You sit low and snug in the M4 and despite its size, it’s an easy car to judge traffic in. Even puttering around gently feels special enough, given how racy the interior is, without being overdone. You hear the bassy exhaust note at all speeds and when you’re finally ready to step on the throttle, you’ll do yourself a favour if you slide the windows down. Oh, it sounds incredible!

You’ve to be mindful of the temptation to blip the throttle though, because the M4 Competition has enough firepower to go from 0-100 kph (3.5 seconds, by the way) in your driveway itself. It’s also quite weight sensitive, agonisingly scraping speed breakers with two occupants, although driving solo it scraped none! Of course, given how race-ready it is, you’re constantly bouncing around on anything that isn’t perfect tarmac, which is the domain of the affluent few in a city like Mumbai. That said, I didn’t mind being bounced around given how easy to drive and readily fun the M4 felt just about everywhere. Those 19-inch wheels are definitely a safe bet for those of you considering the M4 as a daily driver.

smooth operator

What adds to the M4’s usability is all the fine-tuning you can do with its setup. The engine and chassis can be set to three modes (Efficiency, Sport, Sport Plus), the steering and brakes to two (Comfort, Sport), and the M xDrive can be stepped up from 4WD to 4WD Sport or be turned off to give you rear-wheel drive. Having experienced it first hand, I couldn’t be more grateful for it, given the far-from-ideal conditions I happened to be driving it in.

On a good stretch of tarmac, especially around corners, the M4 wastes no time in announcing its lineage. It’s fast in a most addictive way and its roadholding manners are impeccable. While it’s stupendously agile and responsive, I did find the steering a bit too light and floaty at high speeds, which can feel hairy in a car that eats 300 kph for breakfast. The brakes, fortunately, are top notch.

To summarise, the M4 Competition M xDrive is hardcore a BMW as you can buy, especially if you have a thing for fewer doors. It’s also surprisingly practical, given its usable boot and room for two (short) occupants in the rear seats. This or a Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 Coupe, then? While the CLE is substantially cheaper ( ₹1.32 crore, ex-showroom), it’s also considerably less powerful (465 bhp) and lower on its torque output (57.1 kg-m vs the M4’s 66.2 kg-m) as well. With no competition from Porsche either, the M4 is practically in a field of its own. You’ll make do, right?

@TheMotorGram

Published on September 11, 2026