Dan Trent: BMW M6 Gran Coupe – M for Motorsport or marketing?

So I should really hate the M6 Gran Coupe. It is, after all, a four-door saloon version of a coupe itself derived from… a four-door saloon. OK, it's got a lower roof and a sportier look. But it's fundamentally the same and is, arguably, little more than an M5 with less headroom and a price premium of £20,000. You'd expect, therefore, lots of self-righteous 'what's the bloody point' harumphing, especially given I've driven various M5s and M6s from this soon to be replaced twin-turbo V8 generation and never really felt the love.

On paper it all looks so promising too. The 4.4-litre motor has a thumping 560hp and 502lb ft of torque, drives the rear wheels via a fancy locking differential and seven-speed dual clutch gearbox that, thanks to a plethora of driving modes, can do smooth and refined or fast and punchy. Sure, it weighs nearly two tonnes but the engine didn't get the memo, gifting it a 4.2-second 0-62 time and top speed comfortably in excess of its 155mph limiter. So it's quick.

And it'll do the full repertoire, from stylish luxurious transport with a mean streak to full-on tyre-smoking monster. But for all that firepower the engine is curiously characterless, to the point where BMW (in)famously had to generate false sound over the speakers. And for all the configurability there doesn't seem to be one mode in which everything quite gels. Kind of playing to the worst 'M for marketing' fears really.

And then I saw this. Now, at £74,850 this is not a cheap car. By some margin it is not a cheap M6 Gran Coupe - you could have this one for £42K and it's hardly shabby in terms of mileage, spec or desirability. But there's something rather wonderful about the way this one has been specced.

The Peridot Green exterior paint is classy, unusual and downplayed all at the same time. Going by the configurator that added at least £1,995 to the £95,665 starting price. The terracotta BMW Individual leather sounds like it should be awful but in fact lifts the interior and puts an interesting extrovert twist on the cabin, in contrast with the downplayed exterior. I like that. Add another £2,950 to the tab for that too. But our original buyer was only getting started there, desirable ceramic brakes adding a bit of bling with the gold calipers and costing an additional £7,395. And it goes on. Conservatively someone spent £110,000 on this car a little over a year ago and has lost the price of a well-specced M240i in depreciation in that time. Bravo. Chuck in a £5K Akrapovic titanium exhaust system – 10kg lighter and worth another 10hp or so – and there's a chance real engine noise will drown out the speaker-based simulation.

Nothing to say the pace of depreciation will slow one bit for the next buyer. But what wonderful looking car, packed with need-to-know options that speak of someone with money to burn but taste to go with it. I'd happily pick up where they left off.

Photography courtesy of Bramley