Yahoo Autos 2022 BMW M5 CS First Drive Review | Uber M5 adds lightness (and awesomeness)
THERMAL, Calif. – “This thing’s a ballistic missile,” I exclaimed to no one in particular after hopping out of the 2022 BMW M5 CS at The Thermal Club’s South Palms racetrack. I came to roughly the same conclusion 20 minutes earlier, having just wrapped up a less tire-squealing session on a canyon road outside of Thermal, Calif. This beast is a lot of car, no matter how you encounter it.
The M5 CS, a one-year-only limited-production version of the M5, is BMW’s most powerful and quickest production car ever. With an official 0-60 mph sprint of just 2.9 seconds and 627 horsepower, speed was expected, and speed was achieved. That said, the totally unlimited-production M5 Competition is nearly as powerful, trailing the CS by just 10 ponies. If you focus too much on that “most powerful” bit, you’ll miss the point of the CS.
Its true purpose is achieved through the multitude of other changes. BMW put it through a weight-saving program, which is precisely what the large and weighty midsize super sedan needed. Outside, the CS gets a carbon fiber roof, hood, front splitter, rear diffuser, rear spoiler and mirror caps. Unique 20-inch forged (and gold-painted) wheels hide behind standard carbon ceramic brakes, saving 51 pounds versus the standard brakes of the M5 Competition alone.
Inside, weight savings come from stealing the new M3/M4 carbon fiber-backed seats — they still have the weird center insert on the seat bottom — and swapping to a four-seat layout with rear bucket seats. We can definitively say that those rear seats are the coolest on any production car today, and they’re legitimately functional at holding you in. Of course, you'll never fit five people in an M5 CS.
All of those efforts add up to 230 pounds of weight savings versus your run-of-the-mill M5 Competition, bringing curb weight down to 4,114 pounds. That’s still heavy, but it makes competitors like the 4,497-pound E 63 S look porky in comparison. It’s even a touch lighter than the manual transmission-equipped CT5-V Blackwing, beating it out by 9 pounds. Not a bad effort, BMW.
The chassis is worked over to give it a slightly sharper edge than the Competition, as BMW says it’s fiddled with the spring and adaptive damper tuning to take advantage of the car’s lower weight. Those gold forged wheels are the same size as the standard M5 Competition wheels, but exclusive to the CS, you can wrap them in Pirelli P Zero Corsa summer tires for no extra charge. Our road and track time was spent riding on the standard Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, but we’d recommend opting for the more aggressive Pirelli rubber — this is the CS after all.
Having recently driven the standard M5 Competition, which sounds like an oxymoron, the CS diet results in a slightly lither M5 that's a smidgen more eager to change directions and a little less heavy on the nose under braking. The difference in acceleration is discernably quicker than its 0.2-second improvement over the standard Competition would indicate (2.9 seconds versus 3.1), but ultimately there’s no revelation hiding behind the CS letters. Considering how good the standard M5 Competition is, a great leap wasn’t exactly necessary.
