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Hi guys,
As mentioned, today I had my M4C test drive and I want to share me thoughts and also answer some questions.
First of all, I was lucky that the drive took place today, as from next Monday on there are some new Covid restrictions in Switzerland that will get in place, so the Brand Experience Center will be closed from Monday on until probably end of February. Also, we had a lot of snow in the region of Zurich in the last two days (40cm fresh snow), so the conditions were not that ideal for testing a 500hp car, some streets we were driving, were still fully covered in snow, but at the same time, I could at least test how the car performs in such conditions ;-) So keep that in mind, for my impressions below.
The SPY car looks really sharp in real, the pics don't do it justice. The car will definitely stand out a lot! However, for me it is still a bit too much "attention" :-)
Then, let's get to the fun things! It was the same car as @Scorp!on was driving, and I have to say, Portimao Blue looks really great on the M4!
I was alone in the car, the BMW genius was driving a X3M in front of me. FYI, I just kept the ZF8 for about 1,2 min. in "auto" mode, after that I switched to manual, and kept it there all the time. So I'm sorry if you expected some more info about how "auto" mode performs, but I always drive my M2 DCT in manual mode as well, so I had to compare how ZF8 performs there.
**Brakes**
The car had ceramics, and they need some temperature, especially on these cold conditions (-5c, wet). The first few times you step on the brakes, you really think, where are they?? :-D But they start to bite quite quickly and afterwards are great, very precise and the performance is really good, but that was to be expected with CBs.
**Sound**
I really liked the sound. It has a deep note and the difference between loud and silent mode is significant. You can really drive it "silent" if you want to. Overall I think it has a nice sound, and coming from an OG M2, I think this is a good sign ;-) I definitely like it way more than the F80.
**ZF8**
As said, I only kept it short on "D", so all my feedback here is for manual shifting. I was surprised in a good way, the shifts were always very responsive and quick, I never had the feeling, it is not doing what I want or there is a lag. Changing the shift speeds on the shifter, really makes quite a difference between the slowest and quickest setting. Otherwise I never had the feeling that I do not like something or the DTC is doing something better.
**Seats**
The CB seats are simply great! I'm 181cm and 83kg and was comfortable all the time. You can sit pretty low in the car and they just give a very good and safe feeling, the seating position is very good. You really feel like melting with the car and that already after just a few minutes.
**Engine**
So first of all, the car had around 700km and first inspection was not done yet. There was even a message on startup saying "full power available soon", so here I won't have the "full picture", but at the same time, the conditions where anyway bad, so maybe even better :-)
The power felt very good and responsive. I was paying attention to the "lag" stuff a few mentioned for X3M, but for me it did not feel "laggy" at one point. Driving in comfort and stepping a bit on the pedal it of course was somehow a "smooth reaction" acceleration. But in Sport mode, as soon as I pushed a bit on the pedal, the car was reacting immediately. But as said above, I've driven then car in manual mode and in the "right" gear, so this may be different in "auto" mode. The car had enough power in all situations.
**Handling & Suspension**
Of course I felt that I'm sitting in a bigger car, just by its size, but I have to say, I was quite surprised on the first feel of it. The feeling of the "big car" was quickly gone and the car felt very stiff and playful and I didn't had a feeling of a "that much heavier car" that would bother me in some way. However, the conditions where really not good, so I had to take care with "trying things". So I could not go test the car, as you would in summer or when it's dry. But for what I could do, the car always felt very safe and under control, also traction was good when accelerating out of corners or on straights for these conditions.
Here again, the difference you can do to this car, by driving in comfort vs. sport and with all the single settings you can fine tune, you really can have both sides. On the M1 everything was set to comfort and on M2, everything to the max setting. The change between these two setting is crazy, you can really switch the car from a "cruise" to "beast mode" by one button.
@M-Enthusiast
I tried to incorporate your questions to my impressions above, hope this helps, otherwise let me know, here the details regarding the tires:
Winter tires had the same setup as in summer:
Front: 275/35 R19
Read: 285/35 R20
Hope adds some value next to the thread of OP. Please let me know if you have any questions.
And, this is just some feedback from a guy driving a completely new car on some icy roads and trying to suck in so much impressions as possible, but it was just not enough time ;-)
As we have seen all the pics, here just the same as from @Scorp!on, but checkout the snow this time ;-)
Cheers
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