MLife: Tuned In

LIFE Tuned In

Words: Will Beaumont Images: Oliver Brookwell/Litchfield

Max Power has a lot to answer for. Not just the dodgy puns in the headlines or dubious questions asked to women during late-night supermarket car park cruises. But the tons of filler and fibreglass that was plastered onto feature cars, yes there were cars in the magazine not just women, has tainted the world of modified vehicles almost beyond redemption. Aftermarket tuning is a dirty phrase to some. Dirtier and as untouchable as a copy of Max Power after it had been in the private possession of a young teenage boy.

This world set in fast food restaurant car parks with dashboard-mounted PlayStations and underbody neons is now almost 20 years old. There has been a shift in attitudes, tuned cars are becoming socially (and morally) acceptable. Companies like Litchfield Motors are forging a new solid gold reputation for the aftermarket.

To say that Litchfield simply tunes cars is to do it a serious disservice. It’s really an engineering firm. Cars go into Litchfield’s Gloucestershire-based facility and come out the other side transformed. Behind the roller shutter doors, you’ll find endless service bays, cavernous parts stores, surgically clean engine build rooms, rolling roads, engine dynos, car storage, a body shop; everything you might need to test, develop and build a car to genuinely improve it after it’s been honed by a manufacturer.

What Litchfield doesn’t do in-house, it partners with external companies to develop bespoke parts. The best companies, too. A peek into its shelf-lined stores reveals a long list of recognisable names – Eibach, Alcon, Akrapovič, Nitron and more – most of which are building parts to Litchfield’s specifications and exacting standards.

But don’t they just tune Nissans at Litchfield? Oh no. GT-Rs tuned by the company have indeed been plentiful and powerful. Oh so powerful. But cop sight of the car park and you’d struggle to decide on Litchfield’s preferred brand, if it had one. Nissans rub bumpers with Toyotas. Not literally, of course, everything’s looked after far too well for that to happen. Alpines wait behind

New wheels and suspension not only give this tuned F82 M4 a subtly aggressive stance, but also transform how it drives

Audis. Aston Martins occupy the spaces between Porsches.

Then there are the BMWs. Around three BMWs a day are given the Litchfield treatment, whether it’s boosting their engines with the company’s tuning maps, adding its bespoke Nitron-built suspension or simply servicing them. Litchfield looks after so many BMWs, from smaller M135is to the brawnier M4, like this Yas Marina Blue car you see here.

This car is Iain Litchfield’s own M4 and it’s been the testbed for many of the company’s F80/82 improvements, along with the S55 engine modifications. So, over the years, it’s received a lot of attention.

Let’s start with the motor. Iain is a huge fan of BMW’s S55, he considers it one of the most durable, versatile and reliable engines the company has ever tuned. Once the crank hub issue has been sorted, that is. The S55 doesn’t use a keyway to locate the timing chain sprocket to the crank. Instead, it simply uses a sintered washer and fiction to stop the gear from moving. So far, it has proven to be a poor solution and the cam timing can change resulting in a warning light at best. Or the pistons hitting the valves at worst. The problem has been known to affect standard engines, and it’s even more likely to present itself on powerful tuned motors. Litchfield has two solutions, the first is a crank bolt capture plate to lock the hub retaining bolt in

This car has plenty of gadgets to keep you occupied on a trackday, even when you’re not doing laps

place and stop it from loosening.

The second, more comprehensive fix, is a new single-piece crank hub assembly (the original is in three pieces) plus the capture plate. This is necessary on engines where the crank timing has already slipped and Litchfield recommends it for cars with over 600bhp as a precaution.

Although possible, Litchfield hasn’t taken this car to over 600bhp. Instead, this F82 M4 makes do with just 125bhp more than standard, 550bhp. I’m clearly not being serious, that’s almost 30% more power. Torque is also at up by a similar proportion, it goes from 406lb ft to 530lb ft.

Along with tuning the ECU, the extra engine performance comes from the addition of an Akrapovič exhaust. Of course, this makes more noise, too. The sound from the lightweight titanium Akrapovič system isn’t much louder than the bellow that comes from the regular pipes, but its busier rasp does make the entire car feel more intense. It seems angrier, even more so than the already furious standard M4.

Some of this extra intimidation comes from this M4’s bigger, sharper teeth in the

A titanium Akrapovič exhaust with carbonfibre tips helps increase this car’s power output to 550bhp

form of all that power. Even before you’ve sampled the engine’s extra force, you know it’s there, you know it’s going to feel serious.

Anyone familiar with the M4 will now be backing away slowly so as not to aggravate this more extreme version. It’s true that the F82 M4 has a propensity to be snappy, aggressive and is just a little bit unhinged. It’s crazy, that is its character. Teasing it into a car with more bite so that when it loses its temper it causes more destruction seems unwise. It’s like poking a lion that’s jacked up on Red Bull.

Put your small stool and lion-taming whip down. Remember, Litchfield doesn’t just pile on the power with just a simple plug-in program. It provides an engineering solution to a problem. Even the sort of temper troubles the M4 has.

Unhappy with the, err, let’s call them inconsistencies, of the M4, Litchfield developed a spring and adaptive Bilstein damper combo that reacts faster than the standard car’s units. The new shocks also maintain the car’s three suspension modes, Comfort, Sport and Sport+. The suspension is added in combination with a new all-mechanical plate-style LSD, which replaced the electronicallycontrolled M-Differential, forged HRE wheels and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres. Litchfield has also updated the stability control and gearbox data with that from the top tier M4, the GTS.

The uprated chassis is like the

The standard steering wheel controls now have a second use in the Litchfield M4, they allow you to choose different engine maps

exhaust. Initially, anyway. Its presence is subtle. The car is no less comfortable, it’s certainly no brutal track car. Instead, there’s just the sense it’s wound a little tighter, like the suspension is going to be a bit more strict with the M4 and it won’t take any of the car’s messing around.

As a result, you have the confidence to explore a little more of the throttle, you really want to experience the car’s extra power rather than cower in fear of it. Prod the accelerator and there’s noise in stereo; whistling and whooshing from the turbos upfront and a mechanical growl from the exhaust. It’s not a sweet, sultry noise. It’s industrial and purposeful, yet no less evocative and it shoots tingles up your spine.

The sheer force of the acceleration can take some of the credit for those shivers of excitement, too. Okay, most of the credit. You sense the rear of the car dig in, the tyres cling to the tarmac and

Forged HRE wheels and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres are on Litchfield’s latest development of its F82 M4

shoot the car forward. Speed seems to multiply when the throttle is pinned. You can’t keep your foot there for long, the roads and laws simply don’t allow it.

Remarkably, there’s none of the F82’s super smooth wheelspin, despite the extra power. The new diff, fast-twitch suspension and that rubber completely eradicate any wheel slip. Even the thud from the harsh DCT gear changes doesn’t induce a flare of revs as the rear tyres are shocked from their hold of the asphalt. None of that new performance is wasted.

This grip, this composure, it gives you an all-new outlook on steering the M4 through some bends. The F82 has never wanted for more front-end grip, not on the road anyway. It allowed you to maintain a fantastic pace through a corner, you just had to be tentative with the throttle on the exit. The Litchfield version allows you to be more robust

All that extra power needs a race track for you to really make the most of it. That doesn’t stop the car from being fun on the road, though

with your actions. You can maintain your momentum and be deliberate with the accelerator if you really want to pile on extra speed, not that you ever need to be going that fast on the road. Still, it’s nice to know such performance is there at your disposal, it’s usable too. You can still make it throw shapes like a proper bolshy M Car, but now purely on your own terms.

That’s what this über powerful M4 is like on a glorious sunny day. However, as magical as this M4’s suspension and tyre combo is, 530lb ft and rear-wheel drive is a tricky twosome in the wet. You might have guessed this by now, but Litchfield has a solution for that too. It gives you the choice of just how much torque you want the engine to deliver. You can pre-program two different performance maps so you can quickly switch between each of them, much like the M1 and M2 settings that you select from the steering wheel.

How you access these two different engine maps is almost as easy as the different M-modes, too. There are no nasty add-on panels, no awkward phone app to contend with, all you do is press and hold the cruise control resume button on the left-hand spoke of the steering wheel. You then take over control of the rev counter, and the needle points to either the 1 or 2 of the dial, depending on which map the engine is set to. To switch to the next setting, you use the cruise control speed toggle and flick between the two settings. After a moment, once you’ve chosen your preferred map, the rev counter returns to its main job of displaying revs.

It’s clever, it’s neat and your control over the engine’s output doesn’t stop there. Press the cruise resume button again, after you have control of the rev counter, and the built-in BMW power and

Litchfield’s facilities have everything the company needs to build well-developed tuned cars, including its own rolling road

torque dial appear on the infotainment screen. Now you can control exactly how much torque you want to have access to, again by using the toggle switch on the left-hand steering-wheel spoke.

This all sounds like a gimmick, albeit one that requires no extra buttons, dials screens and knobs. But let’s be honest, we love gadgets, don’t we? We love messing about and perfecting our car’s settings. That’s what all those regular steering, engine, gearbox and suspension modes are for, this is just an extra layer of things to tinker with. Great.

Imagine you’re at a trackday, what are you going to do with all that time you’re not out on the circuit if it isn’t to tweak the car to suit your preferences? Imagine if it’s raining and, not only is the M4 a bit frightening with all of its torque blasting through the back axle, you can adjust away from the driver’s seat and not even get wet.

Amazingly, given the numbers associated with it, this M4 is less scary than the standard car. But that means some of the M4’s innate character has been eroded. What it loses in shock value and heart-stoppingly terrifying moments, some of which are really quite endearing I will admit, it gains in quality. What that means is, the Litchfield M4 is closer to a new G82 M4 in terms of attitude. Quality and composure are the overriding factors of its persona. Both the M Division and Litchfield have taken the M4 package in the same direction, it’s just that the latter has stuck with the old platform. For now, anyway. Okay, so the new generation M coupé has a wider breadth of abilities, it’s more refined while still being as sharp as this tuned M4. But Litchfield’s F82 is more powerful, it’s certainly not embarrassed by the new contender and, this will be important to many, its grilles are tiny by comparison.