The Concours d’Elegance at Pebble Beach is one of the most exclusive and exciting automotive events in the world. People from all over the globe travel to see some of the magnificent automobiles on the planet. All of the high-end automakers show off their highest performing and most luxurious cars they have. It’s an incredible event.
BMW is making a bit of a splash at this year’s show, with the BMW Concept M4 GTS.
The M4 GTS is the pinnacle of BMW performance. It’s the ultimate expression of BMW’s racing technology for use on the road.
What BMW does to make the M4 GTS is take a standard M4 and fit it with more aerodynamics, more power, stiffer suspension and all of its most impressive racing technology. This year’s M4 GTS is no different and could be the most exciting of all.
Despite the M4 GTS’ racing pedigree, it’s very much a legal road car. The purpose of the GTS is to enable owners to drive it to the race track, do as many laps as desired and then drive it home again. It’s basically a street legal race car.
The M4 Concept GTS certainly looks the part, with its extremely aggressive aerodynamics, manually adjustable exposed carbon fiber front splitter and rear wing, Frozen Dark Grey Metallic paint and Acid Orange accents and wheels. It also has an exposed carbon fiber rear diffuser, which looks excellent housing the quad exhaust pipes.
Some of the M4 GTS’ new technologies include the water-injection system and OLED taillights. The water-injection system was first used on BMW’s M4 MotoGP safety car and is used in many race cars today. What the system does is inject ultra-fine water spray into the plenums of the intake. The water is then vaporized, which cools the intake air dramatically, thus reducing the compression temperature in the combustion chamber. This not only reduces the engine’s tendency to knock, but allows higher boost pressure and earlier ignition timing, giving the M4 GTS a noticeable horsepower and torque bump.
The engineers at BMW’s M Division have also developed a highly-innovative cooling system, comprised of a main radiator with additional radiators for both high and low-temperature circuits, the transmission and turbochargers. The turbochargers are cooled by way of an indirect intercooler assisted by an electrically-driven water pump.
OLED taillights also make their way to the BMW Concept M4 GTS. OLEDs (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) produce full-surface homogenous illumination, as opposed to a standard LEDs single-point light emission. Their compact design and ability to light individual light modules separately gives BMW an extra level of flexibility in creating taillights.
The lightweight, forged and polished light-alloy wheels in 666 M styling also feature an Acid Orange accent. The 9.5 J x 19 (front) and 10.5 J x 20 (rear) wheels are fitted with Michelin Sport Cup 2 tires (265/35 R19 at the front, 285/30 R20 at the rear).
All in all, the BMW Concept M4 GTS is an outstanding looking machine that will deliver exceptional performance, both on the road and on the track. The water-injection system and OLED taillights give it genuine racing technology to be used on the road. So if you’re a lucky owner of one of these, very limited, M4 GTS’, you can truthfully say that you own a race car for the street.
