There hasn’t been a truly fun BMW M car since the E39-generation M5. That’s an indisputable fact and deep down in your heart of hearts you know it to be true. For nearly twenty years BMW’s M division has taken itself way too seriously to be any fun at all. Way too German, and not in the good way. Craving ever faster lap times at the expense of driver involvement and enjoyment alike. But the carbon bucket seats in the new BMW M4, likely a Competition version or something, that leaked out on Tuesday are just whimsical enough to be considered fun. It’s a step in the right direction.
The new M4 is hilariously ugly when viewed from the outside. The giant nostrils are violent and difficult to stare at. There is only one place in the entire world where you are safe from the exterior views of a new BMW M4, and that’s from the inside of a new BMW M4. At least from the driver’s seat you don’t have to look at the outside of it.
Sure, these seats are crafted from lightweight carbon fibre, but they’ve also got a full suite of power adjustment — at least for the driver — so they have a little bit of that M division BS that I hate. Thankfully they add enough colour to the interior to make it at least fun to look at. With the upper outer seat cushion colormatched to the exterior paint and the rest of the interior fabric a vibrant bright blue, this interior looks like something you might have seen in a video game arcade in the mid-1990s. I would know because I spent a lot of time there sitting in very similar plastic seats. Yes, carbon fibre is plastic.
Anyway, it’s daming with faint praise, but I really like the seats in the new BMW M4. Everything else looks like hell hath wrought something particularly egregious to wreak havoc on Earth, but the seats are dope AF.