BMW M6 Gran Coupe review, test drive

Come April 2014, the Audi RS7 will have competition in the form of the brooding BMW M6 Gran Coupe (in India). Like the RS7, the M6 Gran Coupé is a four-door, four-seat, boot sedan with the roofline of a coupé and like the RS7, the M6 Gran Coupé packs a kick in the gonads under the hood – in this case, a stonking 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 with 567bhp and 69.3kgm of torque. Unlike the RS7 though, the Gran Coupé is purely rear-wheel drive.

Based on the BMW M5, the Gran Coupé comes with a standard carbonfibre roof and a roofline that's 2.5-inches closer to the deck than its full-size super sedan sister. It is also wider and longer and five kilos heavier than the M5's 1,945kg and that brings us to the end of the specification lecture.

You literally need to mind your head when you get into the Gran Coupé. With such a low roofline, you could knock your head on the way into the low seats (in this case, you'd be hitting an alcantara lined ceiling). From the low front seats, the car feels broad and more than a bit intimidating. The steeply raked windscreen doesn't help and neither does the poor rearward view through the letter box-like rear windscreen and then you have to contend with the fact that you've got more power than a Ferrari 458 under your right foot.

Nonetheless, like the M5, this engine is perfectly happy at low revs and because peak torque is available from 1500rpm, you don't need to wring it out for it to feel exciting. However, if you do find a dry, straight, smooth road and give it some right foot, you should hang on. Like in the M5, the engine is rev happy, the shove builds rapidly and over the last 2000-or-so revs, it feels like a couple of afterburners have kicked in. It feels even more maniacal than the M5 and BMW's claim of a 4.1sec 0-100kph time for the Gran Coupé is entirely believable. What's really breathtaking though is the way it gets to silly speeds in a trice. You could be pottering around in a high gear but hold the throttle down for a few seconds and you'll be looking at, at least in Europe, jail time.