With a list price of £123,880, the BMW M8 Competition Gran Coupe occupies a space that is filled with names like Aston Martin, Porsche and Bentley. But unlike its opulent competition, it also straddles a line between all-out, track-based performance and the comfort and practicality of a four-door long distance machine.

Take the beautiful Bentley Continental GT, for example. Straight off the bat, it makes a more comfortable continent crosser and does the whole luxury thing with greater conviction. Similarly, the cheaper Porsche Panamera is quieter and more relaxing to drive. But then neither of those are styled to look or feel as menacing.

To cut a long story short, the BMW M8 Competition Gran Coupe has a bit of an identity crisis and recommending it over some of its rivals (or even other models in the BMW stable) is tricky. But then it's easy to fall a little in love with something that doesn't quite fit in.

Performance and cocktails 

This isn’t just an M-badged grand tourer in fancy clothes, it’s a proper, full fat M division machine and that means there’s a 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 underneath the bonnet, which develops a gutsy 616bhp and 750Nm of torque. Despite its two-tonne mass, it still manages to dispatch of the 0-62mph sprint in just 3.2 seconds. That's ridiculous for something that can happily transport an entire family. 

Opt for the Ultimate Package, which is optioned on this particular test car, and you’ll receive plenty of racy extras (more on those later), one of which being the deletion of the 155mph speed limiter, meaning it can hit a190mph. Just bear in mind this package is a £21,000 extra, taking the overall price of our test car up to £140,280. Ouch.

The low slung driving position and almost bamboozling array of interior buttons and switches make it feel properly purposeful, like something you might find in the pit lanes of a local track day. Although many will notice that the inside strangely feels quite cramped, despite the enormous footprint of the M8.

This is largely due to that heavily swooping roof, making a little claustrophobic in the back, but also the relatively generous 440-litre boot does its best to eat into cabin floorspace. Still, there’s deeply sumptuous seating for four and additional everyday niceties, such as Isofix points on the seats, so this performance machine really can be used everyday.

Whether or not you want to is another thing, because BMW’s chassis and suspension set up is firm from the get-go. where the recently overhauled Bentley Continental manages to switch between an extremely relaxed cruiser and something more purposeful at the flick of a switch, this big BMW starts angry and just gets even more furious as the various sports modes are cycled through.

Couple this with the enormous 20-inch wheels, as well as the skinny rubber adorning them, and you have a machine that bounces its occupants around on anything other than smooth tarmac. The test route for this car was particularly awful but the ride erred on the unbearable when in Sport mode and remained irritating when flicked into comfort.

Still, you buy this machine for its firepower, not its wafting ride, and it delivers horses by the bucketload. Stamp on the the throttle and the revs climb at a serious pace. Opt to swap cogs via the pleasingly tactile paddles and the gearbox offers a nice thump in the guts as it cycles through.

Thanks to BMW’s xDrive system, the M8 Competition Gran Coupe also delivers bags of grip thanks to its all-wheel-drive capability. Select one of the sportier modes on offer and the vehicle cleverly sends power to the rear wheel when required, but keeps drivers on the straight and narrow when it detects things are getting out of line.

There is an option to send all the power to the rear, but this also sees the traction control completely switched off. Only driving heroes need apply here, as controlling all of that power and the substantial weight is a tricky task, especially on slippery surfaces.

Instead, allowing the car to decide where best to deliver torque seems the sensible option and despite its overall size and mass, it feels agile and fun so long as there's enough road to play with, which is not the easiest thing to find in the UK. Alternatively, opting for the ‘slow in, fast out’ approach also reaps rewards, because the straight line performance is highly addictive, which is likely why it will prove more popular in places like the USA, where vast open tarmac is in abundance.

It’s just a shame the big BMW doesn’t shout about it a bit more, because even in its most banzai driving modes, the engine never really lets out enough noise for my liking. Some will appreciate the restrained approach, but pull up next to a Mercedes-AMG product and it sounds a bit wimpy.

First class travel

You would have to be mad to suggest that sitting inside of a BMW M8 Competition Gran Coupe is a bad way to travel, there’s far too much quilted leather, brushed aluminium and piano black for that. But there is an argument that it isn’t quite special enough to warrant that £140k sticker price of this test car.

After all, most of the interior technology is carried over from less expensive models in the line-up, including the 10.25-inch infotainment system that’s mated to BMW’s excellent iDrive system, the 12.3-inch digital dash panel and even the fancy Bowers & Wilkins stereo, but it all works brilliantly, so why try and fix something that isn’t broken?

Spend £21,000 more on the Ultimate Package and you receive a rather cool but slightly pointless M Carbon engine cover, the fantastically powerful carbon ceramic brakes and BMW’s predictably sharp Laserlights. This also adds the M Sport exhaust system, which isn’t loud enough, and bespoke 20-inch alloy wheels.

Bizarrely, it also adds things like heated seats at the front and sun blinds, which any sensible buyer should be demanding in even the base, £120,000 model. But that’s just modern luxury machines for you, hit them with the options list.

It’s a lovely place to sit, even if there are a few too many buttons to deal with. The infotainment system is fast, responsive and crisp, while even BMW’s own voice recognition software is arguably the best in the game at the moment. 

Perhaps one area that lets the experience down is the steering wheel that, despite having some cool motorsport-inspired red buttons to toggle the various driving modes, feels too thick and cumbersome in the hands. Precise steering feel isn’t the M8 Competition’s strong point but the wheel only seems to make matters worse.

To buy, or not to buy…

The BMW M8 Competition Gran Coupe, with its four doors and fancy interior, is definitely the more practical than its two-door Competition Coupe and Competition Convertible siblings, but it’s not exactly the comfortable everyday speed machine that it sets out to be.

Similarly, it’s a bit big and unwieldy to truly be labelled a properly enjoyable sports car, especially when attempting to thread its monstrous power, mass and footprint around some of Britain’s disgustingly narrow and broken roads.

As previously mentioned, the Bentley Continental GT does luxurious cruising much better, although it’s not as spacious in the rear, and there are myriad sports cars one could afford with a £120,000 budget. 

But above all else, there are simply better BMWs to be had and for far less money, too. the BMW M5, for example, feels more practical and arguably more fun to drive.

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