Things that make you go M

Can today's M2 CS hold its head up against two icons of BMW's M car lineage? MATT SAUNDERS musters an M5 CS and M3 CSL to find out

- PHOTOGRAPHY JACK HARRISON

The new M2 CS is a special kind of fast BMW.

Well, it certainly seems that way to me, if not quite to the other judges of our Britain's Best Driver's Car shootout, which you might have read recently (Autocar, 19 November). On that score, little more by way of autopsy seems necessary. Democracy can be cruel - as BBDC history has proven time and again for BMW M cars. A combination of 'Cup' tyres and changeable weather can be crueller still.

My suspicion is that if all five judges had spent as much time in the M2 CS as I did, driving it up to and back from the Lake District so many hundreds of miles in better conditions as well as bad ones, it would have ranked higher. Or, to put it another way, I think it deserves another chance at some glory. And this is it.

Today, the M2 CS meets a couple of cars that show exactly what it takes to earn a place among the M car immortals. In such company, we'll find out just how special this car's particular brand of 'Competition Sport' really is. We've got all the light that an early winter's day can provide and, in addition to the new M2 in which we drive away from BMW UK's Hampshire headquarters at a fresh-feeling 7.45am, we've got a four-year-old 'F90' M5 CS to take with us, plus a 22-year-old 'E46' M3 CSL. This shouldn't be your average Monday.

The M5 represents the last time BMW produced genuinely spectacular results with the CS suffix, and it's the first - and as yet only - time it has been used on an M5. And the M3 CSL? Well, it would probably give both the original M1 and the 'E9' CSL 'Batmobile' a pretty stiff challenge for the title of most celebrated M car of all time.