BMW Z4 M - Chris Turner - My Car

While this might look like a regular Z4, looks can be deceiving; Chris Turner’s 2006 BMW Z4 M is anything but regular.

That’s because while Chris prefers his car to have the more understated outward appearance (even going as far as removing the M badges from the exterior), the performance is where his car differs.

“I’ve done as much as you can without ruining it - it’s on the limit of being ruined on the road,” Chris told us at The Motorist, Leeds.

For a car that looks fairly factory-standard at first glance, what’s he done to make it “on the limit”? As it turns out, quite a lot.

“It’s all poly bushed - front and rears solidly mounted, it’s got Aston Martin DB9 front brakes, CSL airbox, Supersprint exhaust and cats, Quaife diff, Bilstein suspension, direct mount shifter, Recaro Pole Position seats, and a few other little bits and pieces.”

The regular ‘06 Z4 has 255hp. The ‘06 Z4 M has 338hp. Chris’ has 376hp at 8,100rpm.

“It’ll rev to 8,500rpm now, so with the cams and the airbox it made a massive difference,” he explained. “It doesn’t do anything until about 5,000rpm - it’s like a sewing machine until then.

“The cams have just moved everything up - so as long as you keep it between 6,000 - 8,000rpm then you make really good progress.”

While most of the modifications to the car aren’t visible unless the bonnet’s up, there are a couple of hints that this isn’t your standard Z4. The aforementioned Aston Martin brakes peeking through the spokes of the front wheels are one, but they’re slightly less obvious. The real clues come from the car’s interior.

Being a two-seater roadster there’s scant room in the driving area to modify, so the Recaro seats definitely stand out as something you won’t see one come out of the factory with. Likewise the Renown steering wheel, tastefully stitched with the BMW M tricolor. The biggest sign though is the gearstick.

See, this is the direct mount shifter that Chris mentioned earlier. Bought as something of a Christmas treat, “it’s directly mounted to the bottom, and as it’s spring-centred as well, you just throw it up” Chris said, demonstrating the shift.

There’s incredibly little distance between the gears - shifts seeming to be a matter of centimetres, not inches (with the exception of reverse, which is a comparative mile away).

This isn’t just for show though - it gets used. “I do maybe four or five track days a year,” Chris told us, along with Nurburgring trips as well. “I’m hoping to go to a track day at Spa next year. So it gets used properly.”

Spa and Nurburgring trips, and having Oulton Park as his home track, are definitely making us jealous - though his car having a shorter final drive does mean that it’s “terrible on the motorway, because at 70mph it’s 4,000rpm - and you’re sat there with your boomy back box, so it’s loud,” Chris admitted. Hopefully the fun on-track outweighs the droning for hours to get there though.

With such an intricately-modified car, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it had spent more time in the mechanic’s than at home. You’d also be incorrect.

Chris has done “everything bar the rod bearings” himself, saying that “aside from that, I’ve done everything myself. Last month the diff went, so I dropped the entire rear subframe, had that powder coated, rust-treated everything, so you look under the back now and it’s like a new car.” And in true car-guy fashion, he’s learned it all by “just tinkering.”

“I had a few BMW M cars before this, older Audi RS4s, and some hot hatches as well. But I’ve always messed with them and tinkered with them and things like that.”

And while he has that history of tinkering with M cars, he insisted he wasn’t actually looking for a Z4 M when he bought it - but that the “TVR kind of feel to it” won him over. “Big straight six, fairly small, sat on the back axle” were all positives, and that he felt this one in particular had less to lose.

“I bought it on 140k miles, and I’ve had it for nearly four years.

“I just wanted one that had a lot of miles already, because I didn’t want to ruin a really nice one. I knew that I wanted to modify it, so if I bought one that was a bit untidy and then tidied it up and modified it, it would probably be a bit better.”

So next time you pull up to the lights, thinking you can jump a nearly 20-year-old Z4 with almost 170,000 miles on the clock, don’t be fooled. It just might be Chris.