BMW’s next big thing: adrenaline tourism
From drag races in Abu Dhabi to drifting on ice, BMW M’s getaways are turning speed into sales
[ABU DHABI] What do you call a lavishly-appointed executive sedan that can fly down the highway at 305 kmh? I’d call it a fun, crazy idea. BMW calls it the M5.
And at Yas Marina Circuit, where Lewis Hamilton famously lost a world championship to Max Verstappen in a race finish that rivalled the WWE for drama, I was handed the keys to one, under the watchful eye of a BMW driving instructor, of course. The M5 is a sledgehammer of a car, after all, with quilted leather seats to take away some of the physical strain of having your organs rearranged by brutal acceleration.
Yas Marina’s tighter bends would be a challenge for any 2.4 tonne car, but tip the M5 in gingerly and smoothly enough and its front tyres bite, its nose follows. Give it a bit of room, and it lunges forward with the ferocity of an apex predator that hasn’t eaten in days. Its hybrid V8 makes the kind of noise that tells small animals to hide, and if you’re into straight-line savagery, you won’t be disappointed.
Bombing around an F1 circuit in a monster like the M5 is a pinch-me moment on any given day, but it was barely a warm-up exercise at the BMW M Experience, a two-day festival of speed featuring drag races in an XM, hot laps in M cars and a stint in BMW M’s Mixed Reality driving simulator. They even throw in a helicopter ride over Abu Dhabi and a speedboat transfer to lunch, presumably to remind you that you’re mingling with the sort of people who can buy pricey, steroidal cars on a whim.
BMW M, the luxury brand’s high-performance division, isn’t alone in making various driving experiences available to the public, whether or not they already own a car. BMW insists it’s about community-building, but there’s a clear business case here. One in five people who show up to these events ends up buying an M car. And when the venue includes things such as ice driving on a frozen lake, the conversion rate sometimes spikes to 50 per cent.
It’s a move that’s helped BMW M quietly become a volume player in the performance world. What started as a skunkworks operation to build homologation specials (meaning road versions of racing cars) now pads BMW Group’s production volume nicely. In 2024, BMW M sold 206,587 vehicles worldwide, up 2 per cent from the previous year and a record for the 13th straight year.
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Of those, 66,805 were the full-fat high-performance Ms (an 8 per cent increase), while the rest came from less extreme “M Performance” models. Arch rivals Mercedes-AMG and Audi RS are still in the fight – the former delivered roughly 145,000 cars last year, and the latter an estimated 42,000 – but M has pulled out a clear lead and intends to stay there.
It helps that the brand is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. The product range stretches from the compact M2 Coupe to the hulking XM sport utility vehicle (SUV), with an overarching strategy to offer combustion, hybrid and electric drivetrains and let the customer decide what to buy. “Technology openness” is what BMW calls it, according to Silvia Neubauer, BMW M’s vice-president of customer, brand and sales.
What’s surprising is how well the electrified products are working for a brand so deeply steeped in petrol. For the third year in a row, BMW’s best-selling M car was the i4 M50, an all-electric sports sedan. Its success has so emboldened BMW’s push into battery power that the next M3, an iconic name among racing fans, will be offered in pure electric form.
For now, hybrid technology powers the most extreme BMW M models. At Yas Marina, I strapped into an XM Red Label for a few runs on a drag strip. It’s a towering, 2.7-tonne SUV that looks like something a Bond villain would drive. And it launched like one too, with a 200 horsepower boost from its electric motor making all four tyres screech, while its V8 engine brings the total tally to 748 horsepower, enough to slingshot me across the finish line 400 metres down the track in just under 12 seconds. It’s fast in the way getting fired out of a cannon is fast (loud, violent and over before you know it), but the most gratifying thing about the experience wasn’t the thrilling acceleration. It was beating the guy racing against me in another XM.
Yet, petrolheads tend to think of the M4 Coupe as the quintessential M car, and at Yas Marina I discovered that it still feels like the real deal. It’s gained weight since the last one (haven’t we all), but what matters is that it hides its bulk with brute force and the added traction of all-wheel drive. The engine’s volcanic, the grip is plentiful, and you can lean on it harder than you expect. A few fast laps had me thinking that it’s become a more serious sporty coupe than its predecessor.
And then there’s the M2 Coupe, a compact, punchy, and borderline mischievous machine. It’s the one that most closely channels the spirit of early M cars, by virtue of being playfully tossable into corners, and prone to getting sideways if you so much as breathe on the throttle mid-corner. On Yas Marina’s circuit, it was fun and occasionally a little terrifying, but very much the kind of car that keeps a keen driver honest and entertained.
This ability to leave no niche unfilled between bruising SUVs and sharp track weapons may be a big reason why BMW M has overtaken its rivals, but it risks leaving the brand with multiple identities instead of a clear, focused one. Handing out helmets and getting people behind the wheel is one way to counter that, but it’s clear that customer acquisition can be a form of adrenaline tourism when there are powerful cars involved.
“The M Driving Experience has a direction where we want to offer more money-can’t-buy or more once-in-a-lifetime experiences,” Neubauer told me. “And we do see that customers are very much interested in these bigger packages, like four days flying to Sweden and doing some drifting on ice, or coming to Abu Dhabi and having this amazing experience on the racetrack.”
Intrigued? Learning to drift in the snow starts at 1,290 euros (S$1,870), excluding flights to Arjeplog in Sweden’s frozen north. The Yas Marina event cost 5,490 euros, with five Singaporeans in attendance. Four of them were contest winners who got their golden tickets by buying cars at the Singapore Motorshow, and the fifth was a paying customer.
While the experiences on offer are designed to thrill, it might be wise to leave the chequebook at home. Otherwise there’s a one-in-five chance you’ll come home with a very fast, very expensive souvenir.
BMW M5
Motor Power/Torque: 727 hp/1000 Nm Gearbox 8-speed automatic Battery Type/Net Capacity Lithium-ion/18.6 kWh Charging Time/Type 3 hour 15 minutes/7.4 kW AC Electric range Up to 69 km 0-100 km/h 3.5 seconds Top Speed 305 km/h Efficiency 2.0 L/100 km Agent Eurokars BMW or Performance Motors Price S$750,888 with Certificate of Entitlement Available Now
BMW M4 Coupe Competition M xDrive
Engine 2,993 cc, in-line six turbocharged Power 530 hp at 6,250 rpm Torque 650 Nm at 2,750 to 5,730 rpm Gearbox 8-speed automatic 0-100 km/h 3.5 seconds Top speed 250 km/h Fuel efficiency 10.4 L/100 km Agent Eurokars BMW or Performance Motors Price S$611,888 with Certificate of Entitlement Available Now
BMW M2 Coupe
Engine 2,993 cc, in-line six turbocharged Power 480 hp at 6,250 rpm Torque 600 Nm at 2,650 to 6,130 rpm Gearbox 8-speed automatic 0-100 km/h 4.0 seconds Top speed 250 km/h Fuel efficiency 9.8 L/100 km Agent Eurokars BMW or Performance Motors Price S$503,888 with Certificate of Entitlement Available Now
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