Writing about bright orange, surgically enhanced stunners is usually the sole preserve of trashy tabloid journalists. However, the tangerine dream that is the BMW M3 GTS gives us, for once, an opportunity to do some lowbrow ogling of our own, so here goes: PHWOAR!

This is the rawest, most hardcore M3 ever; think of it as a richer man's Renaultsport Mégane R26.R. And the best thing is, you can have one, because it's actually going into production.

But before you get on the blower to the dealership, there's no word on a UK release or price yet - though given our insatiable appetite for all things mental and Bavarian here, it's almost a certainty. Germany gets it in May 2010, priced at €115,000 (about £103,000) before taxes. That's some outlay, agreed, but wait until you hear what all those Euros will buy...

Unlike the M3 'Edition' released recently, which was little more than an aesthetic exercise, the GTS is a fully stripped, track-biased-but-road-legal M3. To the extreme. Black 19-inch lightweight competition alloys are shod in 225/35 rubber fore with über-wide 285/30 aft, and if you look in the tiny gap between the tyre wall and the wheel arch you'll see adjustable racing suspension with springs painted yellow. The brake discs are vented, and six-piston callipers grip them at the front, four-piston at the rear.

The new front splitter and rear wing are both adjustable, and in the style of the E46 M3 CSL, the roof is fashioned from unpainted carbon. To shed even more weight the rear windows are made of Macrolon plastic.

Inside, the weight saving measures are just as uncompromising, with the radio, air conditioning and back seats ditched, the latter's place taken by a bright orange rollover protection brace. Lightweight buckets replace the standard front seats, and a blanket of deliciously light and tactile Alcantara swathes plenty of the surfaces. Thus, weight drops markedly, from 1,675kg to 1,490kg.

Power comes from a version of the 4.0-litre V8 found in the standard M3, but bored out by M Division boffins to 4.4-litres and generating around 450bhp - a circa 30bhp increase. A seven-speed dual-clutch transmission comes between it and the rear wheels.

BMW claims that the GTS will operate in 'a whole new sphere' and that 'the aim is to clearly beat the lap time of the legendary M3 CSL on the Nürburgring Nordschleife.' Frankly, it's going to be nothing short of phenomenal.

Mark Nichol - 5 Nov 2009