Gadgetory

if it's a little odd but I'm driving a four-door luxury coupe on a racetrack but what's up to it this car needs lithium it's got at least two personalities one as a quite credible track car the other as a four-door for four adults who are all for comfort I don't think anybody but BMW can pull this off let's drive the 2014 BMW m6 Gran Coupe and check the tech on the track let's cut to the chase the powertrain BMW is 4.4 liter v8 with direct injection and a pair of twin scroll turbo turn a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission out to the two rear wheels via an active electronic differential this is how the company earns its name we're just about at the ragged edge of all performance functions except I've left a little bit of stability control on to save my ass when I lose it 560 horsepower 502 foot-pounds of torque notice it's rather oddly under torque for a turbo v8 now as we noted earlier the torque on this car is not crazy as a result it absolutely loves to be opened up and breathe and it just runs and runs and runs appeal that there's no red line you have the option of getting a six-speed manual instead of this 7-speed dual-clutch now that's interesting and really a 4,400 pound car has no right to hit 60 in about four seconds but this one does here's where you pay the piper in spite of brake force energy regeneration and automatic start/stop it's not enough to avoid a gas guzzler tax mpg is 14:20 the best way to describe this car's performance especially its power delivery is effortless there's just no problem in there where the car feels like it's got to breathe harder it just bleeds easy all the time that's what I come away from on this engine the breathing is absolutely unbelievable now short of the ostentatious BMW x6m that coupe UV this is the most outrageous of the em cars it says you can have it all except excess weight and here's how aluminum hood aluminum doors plastic fenders plastic trunk lid up here we've got a carbon-fiber roof all of this saving a lot of weight and saving it in the right places oh I love this touch back here look at that ferret in high center-mounted stoplight and inside our m6 Gran Coupe not a lot we haven't seen before I'm still waiting for the new version of I Drive that will have a touchpad here on the controller and let you move your finger around draw characters and pinch-to-zoom here's the home screen the key things are the connected drive area where you've got BMW online and an interesting way to add little applications that are sort of like mini apps more importantly you've got built in Internet connectivity and therefore online search all of this is on a standard 10.2 inch really wide beautifully done LCD display German car still no touch it's all on the iDrive controller but they got this working really well now now this is something new I've not seen this before BMW online widgets it's like a sub set of apps I've got one running right now it's that weather app that I chose and they are cloud-based now this is new also when you're in a screen you also see a shadow of the other screen that you click over to this is a nice improvement now off the infotainment let's get to some of the drive control really complex in M cars this one's no different you've got screen based macros for the M drive modes and then a whole bunch of direct set buttons down here let's walk through them - M Drive buttons on the wheel so you've got the choice of settings Stability control - full-on barely on or completely off here's your engine or throttle response Sport Sport+ and efficient adaptive suspension settings these are your three levels of firmness aggression and road reading steering is variable as well and this is what I call the twitch control tells you how twitchy how tight and fast your shifts are going to be and finally I love this they've got the most amazing HUD in the M mode and you can have it show either general information or you can put it in the MU which puts this really cool kind of a bandit a commoner and shift light indicator right in the glass and down here you've got some physical buttons that go with a lot of that here's my throttle response suspension steering response there's my twitch control so hardware software however you want to get there but these you can do on the fly not just as a macro the shifters editing on these em cars these days you've got reverse neutral Drive that's it once you can kick it back and forth to shift it shifting can also be done via the paddles on the wheel left is downshift riders up shift unfortunately they're on the wheel which I hate they should be on the stalk for a car of this much Road credibility over on the left here your driver assistance technology enables for lane departure and blind spot collision prevention and these cars have efficient dynamics which means among other things he recaptures energy from braking to regenerative lee charge the battery and it's got the unfortunate inclusion of auto start/stop which on this car is as bad as it is on just about every other car I hate it I turn it off standard audio is stunning it's 16 speakers and 500 Watts more you can option up what we have here the Bang & Olufsen system which you know because you got that pop-up dispersion lens on top of the dash it sounds incredibly good I bet the basic system does as well much of that cabin tech comes together in one message on the track a big effortless rocket that sheds weight with acceleration delivers the classic joys of rear-wheel drive throttle steering but also a completely modern delight in its dual clutch transmission so fast and so quick you'll finally give up on any egoistic pretense that you can ship better than a machine in full twitch mode the gear change actually seems to happen faster than the to addressed position they can't live with this car on the track all the time so how is it on the road well first thing I notice is there's a certain amount of driveline noise sort of I guess I'd call it driveline whine that is sort of intrusive around town and such when you just want to chill and just drive this thing there's this kind of hard to pick up on our microphone here but it's really annoying in regular automatic mode it's also a good well-behaved gearbox and reversing good luck I can't back it up without lighting them up okay let's build this guy now it's the second most expensive of the M cars so it's not going to come cheap with destination and the gas guzzler tax it's a hundred and seventeen and some change and we haven't even gotten it seen that style yet the intriguing six-speed is a no-cost pick carbon ceramic brakes are the big one ninety two hundred bucks they may pay for themselves because they can get up to four times the light and they're virtually dust free which I love banging Olufsen audio probably overkill but $3,700 night vision with pedestrian detection 2600 more come on why not the executive package is fifty five hundred bucks and that brings you a lot of sort of silly niceties but also that great HUD automatic high beams and amazing active seats and if you want the driver assistance package with the lane departure in the blind spot stuff that's kind of a steep 1,900 bucks considering it's not really active technology all in or over a hundred and forty thousand here now you know me I don't buy this idea that folks who buy track capable cars ever take them they're very rarely if ever so I have to look pretty hard at this car sibling the 650i grand coupe which gives up very little in terms of performance gives you the option of all-wheel-drive which is important in a lot of your regions as well as a more comfortable ride when you want it and a lower cost of ownership both upfront and a little bit better fuel economy as well plus with this guy you're taking on the a little bit of m-car - leanness which may or may not print for the person who wants a luxurious four-door all in I do love this car but with your money