BMW M5 CSL unleashed

It’s the M5 CSL that BMW never built! To celebrate 25 years of the M5 the German manufacturer has built a one-off edition of the outgoing car, with more power and less weight than the standard model.

First and foremost the 5.0-litre V10 has been bored out to 5.5-litres and mated to a modified version of the M3’s seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox. There’s no official word on the revised power output, but BMW engineers have hinted a figure of around 580bhp is likely.

A carbon-fibre roof, front seats made from the same material and removal of the rear bench has stripped around 50kg from the kerbweight. There’s no word on specific performance gains, but BMW claims it can lap the Nurburgring 20 seconds faster than the standard car.

Unfortunately there are no plans to put the car into series production. We’ll just have to wait until 2011 for the all-new M5.