BMW marks three decades of M3

You’d think by now that BMW would have had enough celebratory hangovers this year. It has already given itself a concept car and a party for its 100th birthday, then it knocked together another concept car for the 50th birthday of the 2002.

But BMW’s archives are rich and bulging are now it's found another one. And this time the Bavarian brand's letting BMW buyers in on the fun as well, because this time it’s M’s turn.

Thirty years ago, M took a bunch of journalists to Italy’s Mugello circuit and let them loose in the very first M3 production car.

And M thinks that’s cause for celebration. It’s about to turn loose 500 versions of its '30 Years M3' to be sold around the world.

Based around the M3 Competition Pack, it lifts the power of the stock M3 by 14kW, giving it 331kW of power and knocking a tenth off its 0-100km/h sprint time, blasting through in four seconds flat.

The 3.0-litre inline six-cylinder engine will be mated to either a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission or a three-pedal version with six forward gears.

Both of them will vapourise rear tyre treads, even if they’re bigger and attached to the same star-spoked wheels as the M3 GTS. They’re still different front-to-rear, with 265/30 R20 boots up front and the extremely vulnerable 285/30 R20s down the back.

Other mechanical fiddles include small changes to the springs, dampers, active diff and the skid-control system’s governing strategies.

Even though it costs another €10,000 on top of the Competition Package in Germany, for much the same chassis and powertrain package, more of the differences in the '30 Years M3' M3 are in its trim and badging.

There will be '30 Years M3' badging on the flank-mounted bonnet-air extraction vents (except in Germany, where it will say '30 Jahre M3') when it goes on sale in July.

The cars will all be dipped into the same massive tin of metallic Macao Blue paint, while the interior differences will be restricted mainly to trim changes over the standard cars.

They’ll include specifically trimmed sports seats, '30 Years M3' trims on the door sills and the dash, plus the same wording is embroidered into the front head restraints.

The carbon-fibre strip on the dash will also host the limited-edition badge, numbered from one to 500 to show where each car sits in the production run.

The original 2.3-litre, 147kW M3 debuted at the 1985 Frankfurt motor show, but its media launch was in spring 1986, at Italy’s Mugello racetrack. It hit 100km/h in 6.7 seconds and reached out to 235km/h and, at 1200kg, was a lot lighter than its successors.