ADRO BMW M4 bumper and aero kit is a kidney transplant
The BMW M3 and M4 are so good as drivers’ cars that they’ve made plenty of buyers put aside their questions about the grille. The 4 Series lineup, in fact, has posted U.S. sales figures through the first three quarters of 2022 that beat the total for all of 2021, and might equal or beat numbers not seen since 2018. Nevertheless, we’re certain some BMW M4 buyers wouldn’t mind the option to revise their grilles, a job much easier said than done. Even the German tuners who specialize in these matters haven’t shown up. Enter Southern California tuner ADRO (Aerodynamic Development Race Optimization) and its M4 bumper and aero kit, which includes the bumper, front lip, side skirts, rear diffuser and a swan neck rear wing.
The first thing you might notice is that the ADRO grille is a reshaped version of BMW’s skyscraper kidneys. ADRO founder and designer Davis Youngwon Lee said any rework is constrained by the features built into the stock BMW front fascia. He told Autoweek the combination of cameras and sensors in the TPO unit “Leaves very little room to design” while maintaining all the functionality. The redesign still makes a big difference, even allowing that the darker color on the photo car helps diminish the grille size. It’s fashioned from the same injection-molded Thermoplastic olefin (TPO) polyethylene used by BMW, and it’s plug-and-play — no changes are necessary to switch between stock and aftermarket units.
If this sounds a little too optimistic, know that Lee has plenty of experience in his chosen line of work. His LinkedIn page lists ten years of Senior Designer stints at Rivian, the Hyundai Kia America Technical Center and Mercedes-Benz USA where he penned the Mercedes-Maybach Vision 6 Concept. Here’s a guy who would understand what’s necessary to create an OEM-spec aftermarket part, and part of this work with the M4 was showing what ADRO can do. “A lot of companies tried to change the front, and during the process they realized that the making of this bumper is a huge investment because it’s a plastic-mold-injection bumper, and they would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it. But we thought it was worth the investment. Not only in terms of sales, but in terms of making a statement.”
The bumper can be purchased on its own for $3,500. The rest of the aero kit is made of pre-preg or wet carbon fiber, and reinforced aluminum, and runs $11,300 including the bumper.
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