Thrill of the chase
IT’S DEADLY QUIET in this little pocket of Victorian wilderness near Healesville, east of Melbourne. Neon-green ferns hide at the bottom of faded eucalypts that themselves slump under a typical Victorian sky – grey, white and more shades of grey, all the colours of the German rainbow.
Pulled over on the side of Chum Creek Road in my fat-stanced BMW M2 CS, engine off, door open, I can hear the distant growing-then-subsiding bark of what could be nothing but a Porsche flat-six. (I suppose it could be a very hot naturally aspirated flat-six Subaru Liberty… or a lyrebird doing one hell of an impression.)
Former editor turned YouTube star Alex Inwood is giving the 718 Cayman GTS 4.0 plenty of curry. Without a turbocharger (or two) stimulating the engine’s mid-range, it’s a case of stretch the legs and chase the redline to extract maximum thrills.
Not that that’s anyone’s chore today. Forgetting perhaps the brilliant (yet flawed) offerings from a little British brand called Lotus, we have assembled the two best manual-equipped compact six-cylinder sports cars you can buy, boasting very different recipes despite similar ingredients.
In the white corner, BMW’s CS is the hottest iteration of the rear-drive M2 yet – and promises a proper send-off for Munich’s ageing rear-drive 1 Series platform. Channelling a little bit of CSL – we love the E46 M3, but then who doesn’t – the CS is the boss version of the M2 Competition, which itself scored a detuned example of the previous-gen M3’s S55 3.0-litre twin-turbo inline six. But where the Competition packed ‘just’ 302kW, the CS gets the full-fat 331kW (both CS and Comp have 550Nm). The CS
