Earlier this year, BMW booked the entire Nurburgring track for a day and brought four of its performance cars to try and set a few new records. Unfortunately, we don’t know when was the exact day that the Bavarian brand got exclusive access to the circuit but judging from the weather we see in the video at the top of this page, it was likely around the early days of the spring. But this isn’t the most important thing – it appears that with this clip, BMW teases a new addition to the M4 lineup. And it might be very, very fast.
The video makes a visual summary of the day at the Nurburgring when the automaker took the M2, M3 CS, M4 CSL, and a yet unnamed M4-based prototype to the track. After some preparations, including tire tempering, each one of the cars made several attempts at the 14.2-mile Nordschleife portion of the track with a flying start. With a time of 7 minutes 38.71 seconds, the M2 was the slowest of the quarter but managed to set a new record for compact cars.
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Next was the M3 CS with a time of 7:28.76 minutes. The speedy sedan has a 3.0-liter inline-six twin-turbo engine under the hood good for 542 horsepower delivered to all four wheels. As a side note, the M3 Touring, the most practical member of the M3/M4 family, currently holds the record for the fastest wagon around the track with a time of 7:35.06 minutes.
BMW M’s new video continues with the M4 CSL. The hardcore coupe went around the Green Hell in 7:18.14 minutes, making it more than 10 seconds faster than the M3 CS. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise as the two-door car has the same engine as the sedan but is around 310 pounds lighter. But this isn’t even the most interesting part of the video.
As mentioned, the fourth car BMW brought to the track was an M4 prototype, and based on hints from earlier this year, we believe this could be the M4 CS. Its time on the Nurburgring isn’t known but at the end of the video, the company lists the times of all four cars starting with the slowest of the quartet (the M2) and putting the prototype as the fastest. Or, simply put, BMW might have just teased the M4 CS as being faster on the Green Hell than the M4 CSL.
Note: 2023 BMW M4 CSL pictured in the gallery.