BMW Motorsport announces ready-to-race Z4 M Coupe

BMW Motorsport has torn the wraps of its ready-to-race two seater. Designed for enthusiast customers who ache to post a competitive time at the famed Nordschleife as much as for professional touring and production car race teams around the world. The Motorsport Version of the BMW Z4 M Coupé, which itself has only just been revealed in production guise, is the first two-seater BMW Motorsport has offered for customer teams.

The development plan was simple: Design a car to race successfully and spectacularly on the world’s most demanding racetrack, the Nürburgring’s famous Nordschleife. The new Motorsport Coupé can be used by private BMW customer teams in the German Endurance Championship and in the Nürburgring 24-Hour Race.

The power unit of the beefy coupé is a development of the BMW Motorsport designed 3.2-litre in-line six-cylinder engine, delivering about 400bhp (300 kW), with the suspension in particular benefiting from the knowledge gained from the successful BMW M3 GTR project.

Plenty of race-adjustable components have been designed into the car by BMW Motorsport and the BMW Racing Parts Distribution. Customer teams now have a new technology platform for use in many diverse international racing and club sport series. Fans of a fast-paced trip around the feared Nordschleife are not the only targets, since the hairy-chested coupé also represents the perfect car for use in the Belgian Belcar series and other, non-European, endurance series.

The kit can be ordered from May 2006 from BMW Motorsport and will be available for an estimated € 250,000 (plus VAT).