2014 BMW M6 GRAN COUPE: Powerful and pretty

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This article was published 25/10/2013 (4596 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MUNICH — The BMW M5 is many things, primarily purposeful and powerful, with the gravitas only a high-priced, 560-horsepower ºber-sedan can engender — but it ain’t pretty.

The 2014 M6 Gran Coupe is everything the four-door M5 is, plus it’s stunning, as it offers a shape only a coupe-style roofline can offer.

BMW’s statement that the new Gran Coupe is “perhaps the perfect combination” of M5 sedan and M6 coupe is heavy on hyperbole, but that doesn’t make it wrong. The Gran Coupe, with a base price of $127,900, is as distinctive and dynamic as its two-door sibling, with an extra set of doors and a 113-millimetre stretch of the wheelbase.

M car design is always influenced directly by technical considerations, BMW says, including cooling air requirements, chassis geometry, weight and balance and aerodynamics. In the Gran Coupe, this manifests itself at the front in large air intakes, optional adaptive LED headlights and an M kidney grille specially designed for the car.

Like the coupe, the Gran Coupe features a bonded-in carbon-fibre composite roof panel, unique among four-doors. Not just for esthetic purposes, the composite roof weighs five kilograms less than a steel roof. Every little bit helps; the Gran Coupe tips the scales at a portly 2,009 kilograms, 61 kg more than the two-door.

Still, in no way is the new four-door hampered by its avoirdupois. As with the M6 coupe and M5, it’s equipped with the most powerful engine ever dropped into the bay of an M production car, the 560-horsepower 4.4-litre M twin-turbo V8 with a storming 500 pound-feet of torque at call from 1,500 r.p.m. all the way to 5,750 r.p.m.

With this to tap into, acceleration is seemingly linear and unyielding. BMW says the car will warp to 100 kilometres an hour in a scant 4.2 seconds, and another 8.5 seconds to hit 200 km/h (for the hot shoes blitzing the autobahn, of course). I saw the speedo flash 232 km/h on the A9, the Gran Coupe all the while as composed and planted as if it were a jaunt to the supermarket.

All this urge is transferred to the rear wheels via a high-torque, seven-speed double-clutch transmission borrowed from the M5 and M6 coupe. Power is perfectly balanced between the rear wheels courtesy of the Active M differential.

As fast as the Gran Coupe goes, it stops just as well. The tester was equipped with optional M carbon-ceramic brakes. The disc rotors are massive — 410 millimetres in diameter at the front and 396 mm at the rear. Made from a carbon-fibre ceramic composite, the rotors are far more resistant to heat and offer significantly reduced rotating mass. The M carbon-ceramic brakes are 19.4 kg lighter than the standard brakes, yet BMW says the operating life of the rotors is several times that of conventional steel versions. The M carbon-ceramic system can be spotted through the 20-inch wheels by its gold-coloured calipers.

The pièce de résistance, however, is the Gran Coupe’s cabin, a lovely combination of performance-oriented cockpit and top-shelf luxury. It starts with the sinfully cosseting M multifunction sport seats, providing the driver and front passenger full lateral support during aggressive cornering, but with enough padding in the right places for long-distance comfort.

The all-singing, all-dancing seats have power height, fore/aft, side bolster and backrest angle adjustment, and also come with pneumatically adjustable lumbar support, a memory function and a manually adjustable thigh support. Then there’s the Merino Extended leather upholstery with pristine contrast stitching, door sills with M6 lettering, a driver’s footrest, carbon-fibre interior trim and a headliner clothed in Alcantara and leather.

The optional heads-up display projects a wealth of information onto the windshield directly in the driver’s field of vision. A full range of colours is used to display graphics, meaning road-sign symbols are realistically represented. In addition to digital speed readout, the M-specific version of the HUD also shows the gear selection, navigation information and even the travelled road’s legal speed limit.

About the only area subject to debate inside the Gran Coupe is what BMW calls a four-plus-one seating arrangement, ostensibly allowing the car to carry four adults in luxury, and offering an additional seat for a fifth when needed. That fifth person has to straddle his or her legs around the sides of an intruding centre console. Consider that perch for emergency purposes only.

There’s no doubt the Gran Coupe is a head-turner, relegating the formidable M5 to plain-Jane status by comparison. The question becomes: What price performance and looks? With the identical powertrain of the M5, the M6 four-door is more expensive by $26,900, a significant sum for even those with means.

But, since it’s not my money, I look at it this way: Beauty may be fleeting, but the Gran Coupe will always be fleet. It’s is big, bold and brash, and it will shake up the order of things in the high-end sport-luxury segment.

— Postmedia Network Inc. 2013