Special brew

The new limited-edition M4 is only the third BMW ever to bear the "CSL" name. Does it deserve to? We find out over a distance of 300 miles (483 kilometres) with a wild ancestor and the benchmark 911.

- James Taylor

A BURLY SWELL OF TORQUE SWOOSHES the M4 down the road, a big fat steering wheel points its king-size grilles at an apex, the front tyres grip as if the road is made of Velcro, and the rears smear subtly wide on the exit like butter on toast. So far, so good.

And so... M4. Also good-the regular BMW M4 Competition is a brilliant driver's car. However, this is no ordinary M4: this is a CSL. Only 1,000 will be built, 100 in right-hand drive for the United Kingdom, all of which are spoken for. For our first hundred-odd miles cutting across Midlands A- and B-roads, however, it feels an awful lot like the M4 Competition long-term test car we ran on the Our Cars fleet six months ago. Again, no bad thing. But a CSL badge on a BMW carries a fair bit of significance.

What is in three letters? To BMW fans, quite a lot. The box of "CSL" badges and pot of boot-lid glue do not come down from the shelf all that often at M HQ. There have been two CSL models in BMW history: the original 3.0 CSL touring car homologation special (and its "Batmobile" aero kit) in the early 1970s and the E46-generation M3 CSL in 2003. Both have gone down as all-time classics (although the M3 CSL's reputation has waxed rather than waned; it experienced a muted reaction at launch, an M3 that was less usable and more expensive. Now a cult hero car, of which 1,883 were built, values are topping £90k = Rs 82.80 lakh).

This new Competition Sport Leichtbau (formerly "Coupé" rather than "Competition" but BMW have altered the tag, perhaps to give them licence to apply the badge to more varied models in the future) costs £128,225 (Rs 1.18 crore), a £49k (Rs 45 lakh) premium over the M4 Comp. In return, there is a 100-kilogram weight reduction to justify the word "Lightweight" and a 40-hp increase. Torque is the same 650 Nm as before, albeit spread 450 rpm more broadly, between 2,750 and 5,950 rpm.