Photographic studios are resourceful places. If you look hard you can find enough clobber to make the basic layout of a car: four seats, hi-fi, steering wheel, stepladder as a centre console, vacuum as the motor, cable reel to represent the electrics, there's a fan in there, a child seat, a broom, helmet, oil can and more besides. Admittedly it got more tenuous. The point is this: that pile you see in the top right photo on the page opposite weighs 100kg. Exactly. I know this because I took my bathroom scales along.
And that's how much weight BMW took out of the standard M4 to create the new CSL. It's a lot, isn't it? Although as we all know, the latest M4 is no flyweight and even with all the subtraction that's gone on, this new car still weighs 1,625kg - a quarter of a tonne more than the last car to wear this, the most hallowed badge in the BMW pantheon.
The first was the E9 3.0 CSL back in 1972. BMW wanted to race in the European Touring Car Championship, so the CSL was the homologation car created to aid that plan. Even at a distance of 50 years, you'll recognise the weight-saving strategy: aluminium doors, bonnet and boot, Perspex windows, the electric windows were ditched, so too various bits of trim and sound-proofing. It worked; 1,265 were made and the CSL won the driver's championship six times during the Seventies.
Hard to say why the badge then lay dormant until 2003. With the E30 M3 BMW favoured the EVO tag, then GT for the E36. CSL returned with the E46 M3. Seminal is a word often bandied about around that car, the first to have a carbon roof (saving 7kg of the 110kg total), plus a carbon airbox for an intake snarl like nothing else. The definitive M car, many reckon, the best there's ever been.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
HEAD TO HEAD VANTAGE vs 911 TURBO
For as long as we can remember the Porsche 911 has been the default best sports car money can buy. Does the new Aston Vantage represent a changing of the guard?
BOSS LEVEL:PART TWO
In a world exclusive, three makers of the world's most powerful hypercars are cordially invited... to drive each other's creations
THE THEORY 0F EVOLUTION
Ridged bladder seats, an inflating steering wheel and an AI track day coach... has Lotus hit on the supercar's future, or gone mad?
Koenigsegg Jesko Attack
The Jesko Attack drives like a conventional supercar. Brakes like one, turns like one, grips like one. But it doesn't accelerate like one.
STIC LAPS are back!
It's a 1.75-mile figure of eight on an old Canadian Air Force base just south of Guildford. Hardly Monza, or the Mulsanne straight, and never in a million years - you'd think a place that would become one of the most sought after performance benchmarks in the motoring world.
URBAN OUTWITTERS
Does the solution to city motoring lie in designs from the past with powertrains from the future? TopGear goes in search of answers... at rush hour
FUTURE FERRARIS
If you thought Ferrar's past was colourful, wait until you see what it's cooking up next. The future's bright, the future's rosso
DIRTY DOZEN
Ferrari's new super GT makes no secrets about what's under the bonnet, but can it swallow five countries in just a few hours? Better get on with it...
MYTH BUSTER
\"ADAPTIVE DAMPERS ALWAYS NEED TO ADAPT\"
The S2000 from a parallel universe
Meet Evasive Motorsports’ Honda S2000R, the car the Japanese firm should have built itself
