G87 Tuning

The G87 is the M car the purists kept asking for: the smallest, lightest body in the M lineup, rear-wheel drive only — no xDrive option at all — and offered with a genuine six-speed manual. In an era of heavier, all-wheel-drive everything, that combination alone makes it the enthusiast's current sweet spot.

Under the hood is the same S58 twin-turbo six from the M3 and M4 (around 453 hp here), so the engine's whole story — the stock-turbo headroom, the calibration approach — is the one on the G80 page, now in a chassis a size smaller and a meaningful chunk lighter. Where the previous F87 M2 split between an N55 and the S55, the G87 simplifies it: one engine, the good one, in every car.

For a build, that's leverage. The S58 responds the way it does in the M3, but it's moving less car, so every horsepower lands harder — and rear-drive with a clutch pedal makes it the rare modern M that's seriously tunable and old-school engaging at once.

The honest note is just that it's the current car: values are still strong, and the bargains come later. But if the goal is the most engaging tunable M BMW sells right now, the G87 is hard to argue with — quite possibly the last of its kind before electrification rewrites the formula.