While hardly any news now, Road and Track reports that BMW won’t be making a new M version of the Z4 Roadster. In the BMW circles has been known for quite some time that the Z4 M is not on the table, mostly because of its small segment and demand. The last Z4 M Coupe/Roadster was introduced in 2006 and it was powered by the S54 straight-six engine from the E46 M3, a wonderful engine for an equally exciting and fun car.
But since, BMW has built another Z4 generation which did not get the M treatment. Such as the case with the new G29 Z4 which will only give us the M40i M Performance model.
The information was related by BMW R&D head Klaus Fröhlich who explained why a Z4 M isn’t at the cards right now.
“At the moment this segment is very small, and I had to fight hard to make the [new Z4] happen at all, honestly,” Frohlich said. “It was against the finance controllers.”
“But you should drive it. It is sensational,” he told the press.
BMW Z4 M40i faster than BMW M2 around Nurburgring Nordschleife
Not only the Z4 M is not coming, but the manual transmission is also not available in the new roadster. Fröhlich implied he’d be open to the possibility of a manual if there was demand, but that seems unlikely.
Therefore, we will have to settle for the Z4 M40i with its spectacular ZF 8-speed transmission which arrives in 2019.
