CSR2 German Cars: BMW vs Mercedes vs Audi, Tier by Tier

Ask a CSR2 player which German brand to build and you'll usually hear BMW, partly because it has so many cars in the game. We wanted to know if the records agree. Our CSR2 world records sheet has 59 BMW records, 41 Audi records and 30 Mercedes records, 130 in total, and we went through every one of them, tier by tier.

The short version: BMW has the biggest garage but doesn't win a tier. Among CSR2 German cars, Audi is the strongest of the three almost everywhere, Mercedes owns Tier 2, and none of them is a real force at the top of Tier 5. Porsche is German too, of course, but it has its own head-to-head in Ferrari vs Porsche, so this page covers the other three.

CSR2 German cars: the scorecard

	BMW	Mercedes	Audi
Records	59	30	41
Best in Tier 2	M235i, 10th	300 SL, 1st	TT RS, 29th
Best in Tier 3	M2, 9th	CLA 350, 19th	RS 3, 1st
Best in Tier 4	M4 CSL, 71st	G 63, 167th	RS 6 Avant GT, 8th
Typical Tier 4 rank	152nd	221st	60th
Best in Tier 5	3.0 CSL, 75th	F1 W11, 80th	S1 ‘Hoonitron’, 48th
Typical Tier 5 rank	636th	667th	723rd

From our sheet at the time of writing. Ranks are out of 32 timed cars in Tier 2, 81 in Tier 3, 232 in Tier 4 and 890 in Tier 5. “Typical” is the median rank of the brand's records in that tier. A handful of records have no time yet and aren't ranked. The Tier 2 leaders for BMW and Mercedes are their Elite Customs Level 50 versions; each car is covered in full below.

Read across the rows and a pattern appears. Each brand is best in a different place, and the one with the most cars isn't the one with the fastest cars.

Tier 2: Mercedes, thanks to one classic

The fastest record in all of Tier 2 belongs to the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupé at Elite Customs Level 50, at 8.273. That's just ahead of the Ferrari 250 GTO, which takes second. Even at Level 0, the 300 SL ranks 8th. The Mercedes-AMG A 45 adds an 18th place.

BMW's Tier 2 entry is the M235i Coupé, 10th at Level 50 and 28th at Level 0: more than a second slower without the Elite Customs work. Audi has a single Tier 2 record, the TT RS, at 29th of 32. If you race Tier 2, the 300 SL is the German car to own, and it's worth taking it as far up the Elite Customs ladder as you can. Our Elite Customs analysis shows how much that's worth across the game.

Tier 3: Audi on top, BMW everywhere

Tier 3 is where these three brands are at their best, and it's the closest fight between them.

Car	Record	Rank in Tier 3
Audi RS 3 performance edition (purple)	7.077	1
Audi RS 3 performance edition (gold)	7.114	3
Audi RS 3 Sportback performance edition (purple)	7.166	5
Audi RS 3 Sportback performance edition (gold)	7.203	7
BMW 2023 M2 Coupé ‘M Performance’	7.231	9
BMW 2011 Rocket Bunny M3 GTS (purple)	7.449	16
Mercedes-Benz CLA 350 4MATIC with EQ Technology AMG Line Plus	7.537	19

Audi holds four of the top seven places in Tier 3, including first. All four are versions of the same car, the RS 3 performance edition, as a saloon or a Sportback and in purple or gold. That makes the RS 3 the single best German car you can build in the tier, and one of the best Tier 3 cars in the game.

BMW's strength is depth. It has 19 records in Tier 3, more than Audi and Mercedes put together, and every one of them ranks inside the top 66 of 81. Thirteen are in the top 50. The 2023 M2 Coupé appears three times near the top, at 9th, 12th and 15th, and two of those records come with notes on fusions: one says to leave them off the Stage 5 and 6 nitrous, the other to fit only green fusions to Stages 1 to 4. It's a reminder that the best time doesn't always come from the fullest build. If you want a choice of quick Tier 3 cars rather than one star, BMW gives you the most options.

Mercedes is thinner here. The electric CLA appears twice, at 19th and 23rd, with the motor held at Stage 4 in both. The C 63 AMG Coupé Edition 507 ranks 52nd at Elite Customs Level 50 and 72nd at Level 0. And one Mercedes, Ashleigh's CLA 45 AMG, is the slowest record in the whole tier.

Tier 4: Audi by a distance

Tier 4 isn't close. Twelve of Audi's 15 records are in the top 100, and its typical car ranks 60th of 232. BMW's typical car ranks 152nd, and Mercedes' 221st.

• Audi: the RS 6 Avant GT is 8th in its purple version and 10th in gold, and the TT RS Coupé iconic edition is 11th and 13th. Behind them, the ABT RS6-R and ABT RS7-R ‘Daniel Abt Edition’ sit side by side at 44th and 45th. Audi's only real miss is the 2014 R8 V10 plus Coupé, 230th of 232.
• BMW: five records in the top 100, led by the M4 CSL at 71st, the 1990 M3 Sport Evolution at 81st and the M5 CS at 87th. The VARIS M4 GTS shows how much Elite Customs matters here: 123rd at Level 50, 197th at Level 0.
• Mercedes: its best Tier 4 car is the G 63, an off-roader, at 167th. The Black Series cars and the AMG GT all rank below 210th, and the AMG GT's record is 231st of 232.

A fast estate and a small coupé leading the tier is a very CSR2 result. The PP system puts cars on an equal footing within a tier, so the cars that win are the ones that launch and shift well, not the ones with the biggest engines.

Tier 5: one good car each

This is where the three brands fall short. Each has roughly one car in the top 100 of Tier 5, and a long tail behind it.

Car	Brand	Rank in Tier 5
S1 ‘Hoonitron’	Audi	48
3.0 CSL (E9)	BMW	75
AMG F1 W11 EQ Performance #44	Mercedes	80
CLK-GTR	Mercedes	137
R18 e-tron quattro	Audi	148
2023 M2 Coupé (E.C. Level 35)	BMW	177
M4 GT3	BMW	179
M1	BMW	182
R8 LMS	Audi	201
AMG GT3	Mercedes	252
SL 65 AMG Black Series	Mercedes	517
R8 Coupe V10 GT RWD	Audi	527

Audi has the best car of the three, Ken Block's one-off S1 ‘Hoonitron’, at 48th. But look at what follows it: a Le Mans prototype and a GT3 race car. Audi's fastest road car in Tier 5, the R8 Coupe V10 GT RWD, ranks 527th. That's why Audi has the best car but the worst typical rank, 723rd.

BMW is more even. After the 3.0 CSL there's a group of four cars between 177th and 221st, then a big gap to the M5 Sedan and M5 Touring at around 603rd. One odd detail: the 3.0 CSL has two records, at Elite Customs Level 0 and Level 36, and they're identical to the thousandth, 6.759. Not every car gains from Elite Customs in Tier 5.

Mercedes leans on racing cars too. Both liveries of the F1 W11, #44 and #77, sit at 80th and 81st, and the CLK-GTR is 137th. Mercedes’ road cars do poorly. The AMG GT Black Series ranks 667th, and the three AMG GT R records are all below 850th.

For context, Porsche's 963 ranks 16th in Tier 5, ahead of every BMW, Mercedes and Audi on the sheet. If Tier 5 is all you care about, our best cars by tier list is a better place to start than any of these three brands.

Purple or gold?

All three brands follow the usual rule from our purple vs gold star study, with one exception. Where the same car has both versions on the sheet:

• Audi: purple is faster on all 14 cars, typically by about 0.05 seconds. The R8 Spyder V10 and Vorsteiner R8 VRS show the biggest gaps, 0.222 seconds each.
• BMW: purple wins on 11 of 12, also by about 0.05. The exception is the ACS8 in Tier 4, where the gold record is 0.109 seconds quicker.
• Mercedes: purple wins on all four, by between 0.034 and 0.059 seconds.

Tuning habits

Across Tier 5 as a whole, about half the records use a final drive of 2.00, and about three-quarters use the 0/100 tyre setting. These brands differ on both. Nine of the 12 Mercedes records use the 2.00 final drive, but only four of Audi's 16 do. BMW is the most uniform: 16 of its 17 Tier 5 records use 0/100 tyres, and 11 share the same nitro setting. The practical point is that a “standard” tune copied onto an Audi is more likely to need adjusting. Our CSR2 best tune analysis explains the common setup and when to leave it.

Which German car should you build first?

• Tier 2: the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupé, pushed as high up Elite Customs as you can.
• Tier 3: the Audi RS 3 performance edition for outright speed. If you'd rather have a BMW, the 2023 M2 Coupé ‘M Performance’ is 9th.
• Tier 4: the Audi RS 6 Avant GT, or the TT RS Coupé iconic edition right behind it.
• Tier 5: the Audi S1 ‘Hoonitron’ is the fastest of the three brands. The BMW 3.0 CSL and Mercedes F1 W11 are close to each other, around 75th to 80th.

Every car linked on this page can be delivered stock or fully maxed. You can browse each brand in our BMW, Mercedes and Audi collections, or see the single fastest car from every manufacturer in our fastest car from every brand list.

The verdict

Audi is the best of the three in CSR2. It wins Tiers 3 and 4 outright and has the fastest Tier 5 car of the group, even if its Tier 5 road cars are weak. Mercedes is a one-tier brand, but in Tier 2 it has the fastest record on the sheet. BMW is the brand with the most to choose from and the steadiest Tier 3 lineup, and that's its real strength: it rarely gives you the single fastest car, but it rarely gives you a bad one either.