If saving money is a primary concern then BMW M4 running costs may come as something of a shock; there’s only one engine and while it’s claimed to return over 30mpg (32.1mpg for manual cars and 34mpg for automatics like ours), in our 1,800 miles of mixed driving with the car we averaged far less than 25mpg. Still at least the sub 200g/km CO2 output means annual VED bills will be low.

Consumables wont be cheap though, whether they be tyres (19-inch as standard and 20-inch optional) or brake discs –especially the gorgeous but £6,250 when new Carbon Ceramic examples – so don’t expect to run any BMW M4 on a shoestring.

The firm’s M cars require more specialist servicing than a 320d as well, so expect to spend a fair amount on oil changes and the like over the course of your ownership with the car.

This car hasn’t been designed with CO2 figures solely in mind, but that doesn’t mean the firm could ignore the quest for efficiency; and with a number below 200g/km that makes BMW M4 emissions rather impressive. Especially when you consider the performance; 0-62mph in 4.1 seconds, a 155mph top speed and an engine that produces over 400bhp and 550Nm of torque.

Of course the M4 comes under BMW’s Efficient Dynamics umbrella, and features Brake Energy Regeneration, start/stop and a gearshift indicator to improve matters further. Added to its emissions it’s possible, in theory, to achieve an average fuel economy figure of 34mpg (or 32.1mpg for cars with a manual gearbox).

This is an entirely new engine for the M4 (and M3), and hasn’t been used elsewhere in the BMW M range. That does bring with it an element of doubt as to how reliable it might be, however the firm has been using turbocharged engines for some years now (both in the regular BMW range and its M cars) and spent many thousands of development miles ensuring it worked perfectly every time all the time, so there’s no reason to expect BMW M4 reliability to be anything but perfect.

Certainly in our extended time with the car, driving the M4 on road and track we were always impressed with the way it handled everything that was asked of it without fault or complaint, no matter how hard the use.

Of course it is loaded with sophisticated kit, from the seven-speed M-DCT dual clutch automatic gearbox to the sophisticated electronic stability control system, which could cause some problems in the future but no more so than we’d expect from any of its contemporaries.