Jaguar XJ vs BMW M Models

What's the difference?

As a child, my parents - who aren't car people - would see a Jaguar and point. It didn't matter if it was an XJ, Daimler Double Six or a Mark II, there was a great deal of mystique around these bastions of Britishness. It also didn't matter that these weren't necessarily good cars. The Seventies and Eighties saw the brand slide into a funk while being passed between owners like hot potatoes.

Somehow, the brand survived its brush with Ford's useless Premier Automotive Group strategy which only came good towards the end as Jaguar's management woke up and put in place a change in direction that produced the Ian Callum-designed XF. Riding high on that design, Jaguar then promptly introduced the very pretty Jaguar XJ.

It has been on sale for ages, but with the addition of a few bits and bobs to stay competitive, it's as compelling as ever. Most importantly, the performance-focused R has kept its unique supercharged V8.

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.