The BMW M2 Laughs In The Face Of Its Official ‘155mph' Top Speed

You might have seen last week that on the way to the Nurburgring N24 (and on the way back) I thought I’d see what kind of speed I could get out of the BMW M2 I drove there. However, on the return leg I breezed straight past the 155mph mark - where the limiter is supposed to cut in - on a stretch of derestricted autobahn, with the electronic buffers kicking in instead at an indicated 165mph.

This lead to quite a bit of speculation in the comments on YouTube. Many concluded that I’d just hit 155mph, and the speedometer was over-reading by a considerable 10mph. Curious to find out the actual speed, I had a look through the GPS data recorded by our TomTom Bandit test camera (the one to the left in the image below) which was also busy capturing my ugly mug. After adding a speed overlay graphic on the accompanying mobile app, I found that I’d hit the limiter at 262.5km/h. In other words 163.1mph, less than 2mph under what the speedometer claimed.

This is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it shows just how accurate modern speedometers are - something you may want to bear in mind next time you approach a speed camera - and secondly, it shows that the M2’s official top speed is off by 8.1mph.

When we queried this with a BMW UK representative, he didn’t seem surprised. He pointed out that certain factors like gradient would have a bearing on the actual top speed, and suggested that many other BMW products would do a little more than the official 155mph limited top speed. It was also hinted that we can expect M2s equipped with the M Driver’s Package (not available on UK cars) to therefore be good for a little bit more than the quoted 168mph.

Of course, 8mph over the official Vmax seems like a little too much to blame on a slope or a tailwind, so it does just appear as though some BMWs will go over their quoted electronically-limited top speeds. Have a quick search online and you will find supposedly limited cars going over their quoted top speeds, and our ed-in-chief Alex even recalls hitting 169mph indicated in a stock F10 M5 not so long ago.

Have you taken a stock car beyond its officially electronically-limited top speed (legally, of course)? Let us know in the comments!