2014 BMW F82 M4

Competition Safety Car

VIN#: F708532

ENGINE  3.0-liter S55B30 twin-turbo inline six-cylinder

OUTPUT 431 hp @ 7300 rpm, 406 lb-ft @ 1850 rpm

TRANSMISSION  7-speed Getrag twin-clutch automatic

CURB WEIGHT 3615 lbs

TOP SPEED 155 mph

BUILD DATE  December 2013

COLOR  Alpine White II

OWNER  BMW of North America

OWNED SINCE  2015

LOCATION  Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey

How do you make safety sexy? Prop a disco candy bar on your most muscular coupe and send the whole shebang bike racing. Or at least that’s what some Munich bigwig must have thought more than 25 years ago, when BMW first supplied safety cars to MotoGP.

Fifteen years after BMW supplied its first safety car to the greatest show on two wheels, a new version of the MotoGP safety car, based on the then-new F82 M4, debuted at the 2014 MotoGP season opener in Qatar. 

“Another safety car was built for the U.S. market as well,” says Tom Plucinsky, the head of BMW Group Classic USA. That car was effectively a visual clone of the MotoGP car, sans series-specific graphics, Plucinsky notes. “It didn’t have MotoGP written on it. It was just a generic safety car, used over here for a few races, and it was also sent to show off M Performance parts, circa 2014.”

The car was a pre-production M4, which means it should have ended the race season by slumping off to meet St. Peter at the crusher. But after gaining a bit of notoriety in the wake of an appearance at the 2014 BMW Performance 200 at Daytona (a feeder for the Rolex 24-hour race), the M4 then became a promo car, bouncing between American dealerships for display as a guest of honor.

At the tail end of that whirlwind tour, when the M4 began looking for a forever home, Plucinsky happily snatched it up for the Classic fleet. And it wasn’t just bikes that drew a connection between the new M4 and racing, Plucinsky notes: The F82 M4, he says, marked a critical step in BMW’s own customer-racing program.

“The F82 was the first car that we built as a GT4 race car in any meaningful volume,” he says. “There were some GT4 E92s, but only about 20 of them. With F82, the customer-racing side of things became quite large.” 

To this day, the M4 GT4 program rolls on strong, and of course, the safety car program does too, courtesy of the new M5 and M5 Touring safety cars. Long (and safely) may they reign!