Under the leadership of 38-year-old Markus Flasch, BMW M has grown its product portfolio and launched a number of exciting new models. What is Flasch’s favorite?

While speaking with Which Car at an event in South Africa, Flasch said that the brand’s most recent driver-focused car, the M2 CS, is his pick of the current range and wants it to be his next company car.

“It’s a very crisp and pure package. Manual stick shift. Basically, M4 technology in a more compact package,” he said of the sports car. “For me, this is probably my next company car after the M8 and X6 M. It’s got to be the M2 CS. For me, a manual transmission is not an entry proposition any more. It used to be the entry transmission and then on top of it you had the automatic or the semi-automatic. Today a manual is for the enthusiast; for someone who wears a mechanical watch.”

The 2020 M2 CS was launched last year with U.S. pricing starting at $83,600

Driving the BMW M2 CS is a 3.0-liter TwinPower turbo six-cylinder engine pumping out 444 hp and 406 lb-ft (550 Nm). That’s enough to accelerate the car to 60 mph (96 km/h) in just 3.8 seconds but compared to other M models currently on sale, including the X3 M and X4 M, 444 horses isn’t particularly extraordinary in the world we’re living in, even though its 50 hp more than the almighty E39 M5 of two decades ago.

Read Also: 2020 BMW M2 CS Costs Nearly $25,000 More Than The M2 Competition

It is no secret that premium car manufacturers have been engaging in an unrelenting horsepower war in recent decades but momentum has started to slow with many new cars only getting slight bumps in power as a result of ever-stricter emissions regulations. Does Flasch foresee a time when power and torque level out and the horsepower war ends? It doesn’t appear like it.

Power, more power

“Power is nothing without control, right? And if there isn’t something with too much power it’s just a question of how you tune in and hone into a car, and how you make it accessible,” he said. “You look 10, 15 years back and if you imagined 625 horsepower in a saloon car, you’d probably be scared. Now, I can give an M5 this 625 horsepower and only drive to my mom, in winter, and she’d still be okay. It’s all just a question of how you incorporate it into a package that makes it accessible for everyone, and this is what M has always been brilliant in. Don’t expect a power limit.”