What's the difference?
To say the BMW M4 CS is a hot ticket in Australia is something of an understatement.
Consider this. There is an even more expensive one, the M4 CS Edition VR46 – at a cool $346,900 – and it sold out in less than an hour. Now, granted, Australia only got four examples, but still, demand was running hot.
That car makes this one, the regular M4 CS, seem like an absolute steal. It's only $254,900 (yes, the word 'only' is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence), and it shares the same upgrades, and makes the same monstrous power, as the VR46 – for Valentino Rossi’s 46th birthday – only it does it for around $100K less.
See? A bargain. At least, that's how I'd be justifying it to myself if I had a quarter of a million burning a hole in my pocket.
So, this or a Porsche 911? Read on.
You want a V12 Ferrari, but you have growing responsibilities. A strictly two seat supercar just isn't quite right when kids start to arrive.
Sure, you can add a Ferrari F12 to your collection, and pick up a Merc-AMG family truckster to cover the functional stuff.
But it's not the same. You want to have your Italian torta, and eat it, too. Enter the Ferrari GTC4Lusso, the prancing horse’s latest take on a rapid, luxurious, four seat coupe, able to leap continents in a single bound without so much as a bead of perspiration forming on its forehead.
It's fast, suitably furious, and able to accommodate family or friends on a fast blast to anywhere you choose to go. And as usual with Maranello’s finest, the name says it all.
'GT' stands for Gran Turismo (or Grand Tourer), 'C' is short for Coupe, '4' relates to the number of people it accommodates, 'Lusso' means luxury, and of course, Ferrari is Italian for fast.
Brutal, bruising and utterly brilliant, the M4 CS will be an acquired taste due to its no-compromise approach, but those willing to take the leap will find a performance car like few others at their disposal.
The Ferrari GTC4Lusso is a properly fast, beautifully composed, and supremely luxurious four-seat coupe.
Sadly, evermore stringent emissions regulations have put atmo V12's on the knife edge of extinction, with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin and a few others hanging on for grim death.
In fact the twin-turbo V8 Lusso T (powered by the same engine used in the California T and 488) will arrive and be sold alongside this car in Australia later this year.
But we’d like to propose a captive breeding program to keep the big V12s alive because this engine’s soundtrack and the GTC4Lusso’s overall driving experience is magnificent.