Ride On Board Manhart's Ridiculous 600bhp M5 V10-Engined E85 Z4
If you thought Manhart’s recently revealed 900bhp, £250,000 RS Q8 and 812bhp BMW M8 were the maddest two things the tuner has ever done, you ought to have a look through its back-catalogue. It’s littered with lunacy, but there’s perhaps one car which deserves the prize of the most unhinged.
It’s the MHZ4 600, which involved the arduous task of squeezing the E60 M5’s ‘S85’ 5.0-litre V10 under the bonnet of an E85 Z4. Manhart made a ‘standard’ version (below) which made a mere 542bhp after an ECU tweak, but the limited edition MHZ4 600 had its engine bored out to 5.8 litres to give around - as the name implies - 600bhp.
Thankfully, the tyres were widened to give the car some hope of setting off the line without generating large clouds of smoke, and there were some suspension and braking changes too. With getting on for double the output of the most powerful stock E85 Z4, the 600 will - if you’re feeling brave enough - do over 186mph.
Want to know what that’s like? AutoTopNL recently got behind the wheel (video at top of page) to take us all for a ride.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
As an owner of a Z3M, this is now my Dream Car.
This is basically the closest thing to a sophisticated German Cobra.
///M Zed Cars were always meant to be the most sophisticated but still old school roadster of it’s class. (Z3M - Boxster S - SLK AMG) This Mannhart brings things up to Eleven but maintains the character of the Roadster and that, is proper tuning.
That is awesome!
Okay thats a real sleeper car there!
Let’s just hope they upgraded the rod bearings while doing all this
probably because i assume they’d have a stroker crankshaft to make 5.8 litres
The most fun you could have this side of strapping a jet engine to a skateboard