By Lawrence Ulrich
It’s a brilliant car. Exclusive, too. But this limited-run model comes with a hefty price
In the high-performance smorgasbord known as BMW Test Fest, held this year at New York’s Monticello Motor Club, there were richer, meatier dishes than the 2020 M2 CS. Among them: a 612-horsepower, $142,000 Alpina XB7, which plopped 5,900 surprisingly graceful pounds on Monticello’s tabletop-smooth track. The M5 and M8 Competition (at a respective $111,095 and $134,995), whose absurdly over-sauced, 617-horsepower V-8s make them faster than a C8 Corvette or Porsche 911 Carrera 4S from 0-60, or in the quarter-mile.
By those standards, the limited-run M2 CS coupe seems an amuse bouche, with “only” 444 horsepower from the twin-turbo inline-six used in the larger M4 Competition. But ask a subset of BMW fans — you know, the ones who bitch about BMW not building ‘em like they used to — to name their favorite current model, and the M2 CS will have them raising hands like a classroom nerd in the front row.