1996 Bmw M3 Base Coupe 2-door 3.2l on 2040-cars

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Here's why you don't want the 2016 BMW M4 Clubsport

BMW Spain recently announced a special-edition M4 Competition Sport. It's billed as a more comfortable version of the M4 GTS (including rear seats) and, with only 60 copies available, will be more rare than that hardcore M4. But hold on a second because the CS is not exactly the unicorn it appears to be. And the closest thing to a CS in the United States might be better. Here's why. The M4 Competition Sport comes with more power, 20-inch wheels, and adaptive M chassis. The twin-turbo six has been turned up to 444 horsepower, which is shy of the crazy 493-hp water-injection version from the GTS. In fact, it's the same power you get with the $5,500 Competition Package that BMW USA announced back in January. And our Competition Package also comes with the wheels and M chassis setup. View 38 Photos We concede one area where the M4 CS does earn our envy. The giant carbon wing on the back and various other carbon-fiber elements do look pretty great, although tacking them on likely does not reduce the vehicle's weight. They're also all available from the vast M Performance catalog, so you could buy an M4 and tack on whichever ones you like best. Lucky Spanish customers also get carbon-ceramic brakes, but we can order those as a standalone option for $8,150. And the M4 CS only comes with a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. Here in the States you can order all those goodies with a manual. Each of the 60 M4 Competition Sport coupes will sell for 132,900 euros in Spain, which works out to about a 45 percent markup compared to a standard-issue M4 coupe. So no, we don't get the numbered plaque on the center console or the neat seats. But we do get all the rest of it, with a manual, and at a much lower price than the Spanish M4 CS. And you can get the same stuff in the four-door M3. U-S-A! U-S-A! Related Video: Related Gallery 2016 BMW M4 GTS View 65 Photos BMW Coupe Performance bmw m4 bmw m4 gts

Mercedes-Benz C-Class named 2015 World Car of the Year

It's been a good morning for Mercedes-Benz, with three of the company's wares taking home awards today at the New York Auto Show. The 2015 World Car of the Year awards have just been announced, and the charming new C-Class sedan has taken top honors, beating both the new Volkswagen Passat and Ford Mustang. But Car of the Year isn't the only award Mercedes received this morning. Here are the other World Car announcements, where M-B was honored two more times. World Performance Car of the Year: Mercedes-AMG GT World Luxury Car of the Year: Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe World Green Car of the Year: BMW i8 World Car Design of the Year: Citroen C4 Cactus Congratulations, all around, to this fantastic group of cars.

2015 BMW Alpina B6 xDrive Gran Coupe

Alpina has been lovingly modifying BMWs for half a century, but as we learned during a tour of the company's HQ in Buchloe, Germany, Alpina has been in the wine distribution business for nearly as long. The company has an estimated million bottles on reserve in two warehouses and a beautiful wine cellar/tasting room on property in western Bavaria, just yards from where its 1,500 hand-crafted automobiles per year are produced.
What does that have to do with the new B6 Gran Coupe? Well, it may help make sense of the overall character of Alpina's automobiles, especially vis-à-vis the similarly priced, similarly powerful M Cars that BMW sells in far greater numbers. Alpinas are built by wine connoisseurs for wine connoisseurs, or wine connoisseur types; they are not rip-snortin' racecars for the road - that's M's domain. Alpinas are esoteric, rich in character and nuanced. But make no mistake: they are very, very fast.
Our brief first drive of the B6 Gran Coupe - the only 6 Series-based Alpina we'll get in the US for 2015 - took place on German autobahns and Austrian alpine roads, where the car is more at home than anywhere in the world, both literally and figuratively. With 540 horsepower and 540 pound-feet of torque on tap from its twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V8 and xDrive all-wheel drive, the B6 is said to be able to hit 60 miles per hour in 3.7 seconds on its way to a top speed of 198 mph, a massive 43 mph faster than the M6, which is electronically limited to 155 mph. Yet even at insane speeds - we saw an indicated 190 mph on one particularly lonely stretch of Autobahn - the B6 feels more luxurious than sporty, taking the countenance of a low-slung Bentley Continental GT or an Aston Martin Rapide S, not a knife-edged supercar. It doesn't feel scintillating like a Porsche 911 GT2; rather it feels rock steady, like the 4,780-pound luxury sedan it is.