M5 CS Most Powerful BMW Road Car Ever

• More power, less weight for M5 CS

• One-year special gets gold trim and wheels

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The quickest and most powerful BMW production car ever is here, and it might not be the model you expected. It’s the company’s executive express sedan, the M5, now offered in a new CS limited-production model that will only be offered for a single model year.

The 2022 BMW M5 CS takes the already potent M5 Competition and turns the wick up just a little bit more. The 4.4L M V8 has been tweaked up to 627 hp, 10 more than the Competition model. Torque isn’t changed, but the flat 553 lb-ft curve is now 90 rpm wider than before.

It’s not just the extra power that pushes the car to be 0.2 seconds quicker than an M5 Competition to 98 km/h, which it can reach in 2.9 seconds, BMW has also shed some weight from the big car.

Still hardly light, new kit shaves a not-insignificant 230 lbs (104 kg) from the car. A quarter of that comes with the switch from steel to carbon ceramic brakes, but a carbon fibre roof, hood, rear spoiler, front splitter, and mirror caps make up much of the rest.

The chassis upgrades include engine mounds more than 50 percent stiffer than the standard M5, with 10 percent firmer springs and a lower ride height. Increased negative front camber keeps the tires flat to the road, while the rear anti-roll bar is also firmer than before. The adaptive dampers are tweaked to make best use of the lower weight and the available Pirelli

high-performance tires.

The gold wheels are exclusive to the CS, as is a green paint that makes the car look wonderfully vintage Lotus-like. A gold bronze finish is added to the model badges and the grille as well, while the LED running lights are yellow instead of white.

We’re not yet sure if the car is coming to Canada, but it will arrive in the US in the second half of the year. There, it will run $142,000, $38,500 more than a standard M5.