Who Exactly Is Manhart’s 888bhp BMW XM For?

In the year that is 2024, there are many intelligently designed, cleverly engineered, enjoyable-to-drive cars on sale. The BMW XM is not one of them. It’s a goppingly ugly, 2.7-tonne monument to excess that attempts to bully physics into submission, borders on sacrilege in the way it tries to reference the groundbreaking original M1, and was designed for a market that doesn’t seem to exist, given how sluggishly it’s selling.

Anyway, in perhaps the most inevitable automotive news of the year, our favourite German purveyors of big power, Manhart, has got its hands on the XM, and given it 888bhp to create the MHXM 900. Sigh. Let’s get this over with, shall we?

This shade isn’t particularly directed at Manhart, which is perfectly capable of excellence – see its lovely ‘MH8’ E31 8-series restomod for proof, or its tweaked take on the Toyota GR Supra. We can’t blame the company for recognising that there’s at least a handful of misguided people out there who’d look at the XM and think “Yes, looks excellent, but what if it was slightly uglier and more pointless?” and deciding to make a quick buck.

To that end, it’s fitted one of its MH-tronik tuning kits to the XM’s 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8. That means that when the plug-in hybrid XM is fully charged (which it never will be), it now makes a total of 888bhp and 885lb ft of torque. That’s more than a Porsche 918 Spyder, and yet we’re genuinely struggling to give a shit.

Elsewhere, there’s a whole slew of new exhaust choices so you can make even more noise as you do a 10-30mph pull down a busy pedestrian-lined city centre street, and 24-inch rims, because as we all know, all the world’s roads are in perfect condition and contain no potholes whatsoever.

To its credit, Manhart hasn’t taken things too far with the styling, although that’s largely because the XM leaves BMW’s factory already looking like it’s paid a visit to one of the gaudier tuning companies. Perhaps in a knowing nod to the XM’s appearance and size, though, Manhart has painted this example the exact same colour as an elephant. It’s also thrown lots of carbon fibre at the inside, because, y’know, that’s going to make all the difference on a roadgoing aircraft carrier.

Manhart doesn’t give a price for this conversion, but if it does interest you, then our advice is to go stand in front of a mirror and take a good, long look at yourself.