To M or not to M? Which BMW super-naked should you pick?

BMW’s M model range has firmly established itself in the car world as something special. First introduced in the late 1970s, the ‘M’ stands for motorsport and if this letter and its accompanying light blue, dark blue and red stripe are displayed on a four-wheeler, then it has been modified in-house by the German manufacturer to elevate its performance and handling abilities.

Yet it took the motorcycling side of BMW’s business until 2021 to capitalise on the M brand, eventually launching the M1000RR model after teasing BMW owners with a few bolt-on performance-enhancing M parts two years earlier. And that was just the starting point.

This year we have seen the launch of a second M model, the M1000R. Sharing components with the M sportsbike, with more than 200bhp, an incredibly advanced tech package and even aeroinducing wings, the M super-naked is certainly worthy of the M model logo displayed on its flanks. But here is the slightly strange thing, while some parts of the M1000R are unique to the bike, many are shared with its lower-spec S1000R sibling.

And if you delve into the S1000R’s optional extras list, you will soon discover M Package parts to add onto the bike. Which begs the question, if you take an S1000R and add the M Package to it, are you effectively creating an M model on the sly? Or does the proper M model deliver a riding experience, good or bad, that even a fully-loaded S1000R can’t replicate?