I like John Barker. He’s a great guy. Unassuming, unshakeably calm and with a dry wit of razor sharpness. A couple of beers with John is a very fine time indeed. However, he is literally the last person on earth you want bearing down on you in a Toyota GR Yaris on a freezing cold morning as a bumpy, narrow, glistening road disappears around a sharp right ahead. Especially when you’re in a much more powerful, much faster car. Something like the BMW M4 that I’m currently driving, heart in mouth and so preoccupied with what’s going on behind that I swear I can hear the demented warble of the Toyota’s three-cylinder motor filling the cabin. On another day I’d probably indicate left timidly and let the Yaris romp past in a ball of celebratory spray, the four-wheel-drive equivalent of a bootful of sand in the face. But not today. This is a BMW M4 Competition xDrive. It’s bigger, heavier and much more powerful than the Yaris and, whilst the conditions suggest those things could be a huge disadvantage, the xDrive system evens things up by allowing the German car to utilise its natural acceleration advantage. So I relax just a little bit and decide to see if a four-wheel-drive BMW M4 just might be the very best sort of BMW M4.
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