In the past, 0-60 and 1/4 mile times were the only numbers that people seemed to care about. In today’s world, we definitely still care about those, but lap times also play an important role. Because a car has to handle well not just go in a straight line, right?
If anyone has that balance figured out, it would have to be BMW’s M Cars. German magazine Autobild recently did a test on the entire M lineup and called the result “M Fascination.” As part of the article, Autobild pitted each M car against each other on the Sachsenring, a German race track. It isn’t the Nurburgring, but we’ll take it as an important indicator nonetheless. As expected, the highly-expensive and German-only M3 GTS is the quickest.
Out of recently available cars though, the fastest M in the BMW lineup is the special edition M3 CRT, clocking in with a time of 1:38:87. Three tenths – an almost imperceptible difference – of a second slower is the all-new F10 M5 with a time of 1:38.90.
The 1 M Coupe is next in line, beating out the M3 Coupe with a time of 1:40.18 versus 1:40.52. So much for the baby BMW being the slowest. A lot of this comes down to the M3 being the oldest product in the lineup; the F10 is all new and the 1M Coupe was recently developed. It will be interesting to see where the next-generation M3 coupe lands.
Versus its competition, the M5 bested the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG Performance Package. With a time of 1:38.13 the Porsche Panamera Turbo S is the top dog of performance sedans at the track. You pay for that extra time though – and handsomely. It’s great to have this set of data to pore over and see where the new M5 ranks. The new M5 goes on sale next year.
