There’s no shortage of tuners willing to extract enormous numbers from BMW’s S58 six-cylinder engine. With enough money and hardware, a modern M3 or M4 can end up producing the sort of horsepower once associated with exotic supercars.
AC Schnitzer has stopped at 610 hp.
On paper that almost sounds restrained. In reality, it’s an additional 80 hp over the 530-hp version of the BMW M4 Competition with M xDrive, and it fits the German tuner’s usual approach rather well: improve the car without turning the specification sheet into the entire point of the exercise.
The upgrade is available for the current G82 M4 Competition Coupé and G83 Convertible, with AC Schnitzer offering different configurations depending on drivetrain and specification.
Performance is only one part of the catalogue.
Owners can combine the engine upgrade with an AC Schnitzer exhaust, suspension changes, aerodynamic components and a surprisingly large choice of wheels. The latter include forged 20-inch designs as well as staggered 20/21-inch wheel-and-tire packages, with Michelin and Continental options available directly through the tuner.
That modular approach makes more sense than it might initially appear.
Not every M4 owner wants a complete show car. Someone might be perfectly happy with the factory bodywork and simply want a little more power and a better stance. Another owner may leave the engine alone and concentrate on wheels, suspension and aerodynamics.
AC Schnitzer sells the pieces separately rather than forcing every customer into one complete conversion.
The pricing also demonstrates how quickly a serious BMW tuning project can become expensive. The standalone 610-hp performance upgrade is listed at €5,892 on AC Schnitzer’s German website, while versions combined with the tuner’s exhaust system can approach €10,000 before you start adding wheels and carbon parts.
A forged wheel-and-tire package can add several thousand euros on its own.
Of course, the obvious question is whether an M4 Competition needs another 80 horsepower in the first place. Probably not.
But “need” has never been an especially useful measurement in the tuning world. More important is whether the additional performance ruins the balance of a car that was already very quick from the factory.
AC Schnitzer’s philosophy is deliberately different from chasing the largest dyno number possible. The company says its performance development focuses heavily on usable torque and durability, with components tested both on public roads and racetracks.
That doesn’t make 610 hp modest.
It simply makes it a different sort of tuning project from the 800- or 1,000-hp BMW builds that tend to dominate YouTube thumbnails.
An M4 Competition with 610 hp is still absurdly fast. It just doesn’t need a paragraph explaining why the engine might survive it.
