BMW M3 CS 2018 review

Autocar readers might just feel differently, warmly referring on occasion to the last ‘proper’ this or that. That’s where this car comes in, because as far as the M3 is concerned, the Club Sport could be ‘the one’.

It means this lightweight, track-ready saloon is significant before you even get to the nuts and bolts, the composites and aerodynamics – and before you consider how uncommon a sight it will be on the road. The M4 coupe will remain in production for some time to come, but the last M3 of any description will go down the line in June, its tenure lightly truncated by the WLTP test cycle.

The M4 was always intended to last a little longer and will benefit from a new particulate filter to facilitate that. The upshot is that no more than 1200 examples of M3 CS will leave BMW’s Regensburg plant, and there’s also a price tag sure to cement its rarity. You’d have to wholeheartedly buy into what is rather a niche corner of the automotive world – the one inhabited by factory-prepared trackday saloons – to stump up the best part of £90,000.

What you’ll get in return is the same black-accented aesthetic formula you’ll find on the M4 CS released last year. The body features a wickedly profiled carbonfibre Gurney flap to match a similarly aggressive front splitter.

Painted on top but naked underneath, so too is the bonnet wrought of carbonfibre-reinforced plastic – it’s 25 per cent lighter than that of a standard M3 – and if you sidle up to an M3 CS eventually a broad, sunken vent ahead of the brutal powerdome will reveal itself. It gives the car’s snout a DTM-style rake, something of a rictus snarl.

And forget a finger: you could barely get even a cigarette-paper between the rear wheelarches and the semi-slick Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres. They’re wrapped around lightweight forged alloys wheels of 20in at the rear and 19in at the front. On a Competition Pack M3 – until now the most focussed variant – you’ll find the larger wheel size at the front too, though the CS dials down the glamour for greater steering response.

Even so, not since the M3 CRT of the noughties has the spiritual cornerstone of M Division’s operations held such deliciously serious visual appeal.

Aside from a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission that seems reluctant to downshift early, therefore limiting the opportunity for engine braking, our only objective complaint is that while the sensory relay from contact patch to steering rim is improved, it’s still a marginal affair. A clearer line of communication runs to the backs of your thighs, however.

But what of this engine? It’s never been the most affable device, though in this application it barks viciously through a sports exhaust rounded off by a quartet of stainless steel tips. It also seems to punch harder through the mid-range than ever before, which is the result of an improved map rather than any hardware changes. Just like the M4, in the face of more powerful rivals the M3 has long wanted for greater in-gear shove at moderate crank speeds, and now it has it.

With all that balance and grip, this car’s limits are stratospherically high – too high, perhaps. Mind you, were a useful degree of temperature to be worked into the tyres on, say, a damp day back in Blightly, it would likely satisfy its driver in a way few others can, not least because M has slackened off the stability-control parameters both in normal driving and when you select M Dynamic Mode.

This F80 M3, which began life with a capricious dynamic character, has become deeply intuitive and is no small way likeable.