M3: A story of real world performance

The M3 generations driven

For 25 years the world's best roads have had the surrounding air swallowed, squashed, burnt and ripped by fast, little BMW M3s. The story of how the M3 was born is a fairly simple one, and one told well by the man who created it.

Thomas Ammerschäger was drafted in by BMW from Ford's European touring car operation to lead it into the World Touring Car Championship. He quickly realised what needed to be done, but so did BMW's engine guru, Paul Rosche, and then BMW CEO, Eberhard Kueneim.

The M3 wasn't the first M, because the German marque's go-fast division had already finished production of the (spectacularly unsuccessful) mid-engined M1. M was also already building the six-cylinder M5.

Because the E30 M3 was born with racing in mind, Rosche needed revs and, with the technology available at the time, the six-cylinder M5 engine wasn't stiff enough in the crank to handle the 10,000-plus rpm he had in mind.

It wasn't stiff enough, but it was clever enough, so they just cut off two cylinders from the M88 engine's cylinder-head from the M1 and bolted a panel onto the back of it. In just two weeks, the 2.3-litre M3 four-cylinder was born.

"It wasn't really made as a production car," Ammerschäger admitted. "It was a homologation car to go racing, but we still had to make 5000 of them in a year, so it was all industrialised."

Which goes to show you shouldn't listen to everything English motoring writers espouse... Because the E30 M3 was one of the biggest let-downs of my motoring life!

It's not fast, it's not agile, it's not especially strong, it's not direct or tactile and it's certainly not fun. Indeed, there is just 143kW of power on tap here and it revs to 6750rpm, but there's never any real aural temptation to do this, because the loudness of the four pot just gets increases with more revs.

You forget how times have moved on from 1985 sometimes and one of those times was when my colleague tried to unlock the boot with the button on the key fob, which turned out to be a tiny torch light that helped you get the key in the lock at night. Hmmm. Then there was the push button boot opening system, the ultra high boot lip and the clunky old door handles.

The E30 M3's steering is heavy and slow, particularly in the first 90 degrees of wheel turn, and there's no feel whatsoever. Then there's an odd gearshift, with first gear back and to the left, opposite Reverse, which leaves second to fifth in an H-pattern further over.

It only weighed 1200kg, partly because the front and rear bumpers, the side sills, the bootlid and the spoiler were all plastic, and with its catalytic converter in place, it could hit 235km/h, though that must have taken an enormous amount of straight, flat road to achieve.

The racing versions had 300hp (220kW) at 8200rpm and Roberto Ravaglia became the first and only World Touring Car Champion in one in 1987 (after just about everyone else got pinged for cheating), but the road car wasn't quite as much fun.

It did remind us of the days of lift-off oversteer. Whenever we accelerated out of a corner, then lifted off the throttle suddenly, the back end of the M3 would pendulously, ponderously, fall about on its bushes and swing loose into a back-end slide. And, with its thrashy engine, the gear lever that pulled out and the blah feedback, that was as much fun as it could muster.

In fact, these days, across the mountain pass we drove it on, you'd be quicker in just about any four-cylinder hatchback.

E30 M3 Convertible
If the M3 was a disappointment, the M3 Convertible was so ordinary that it was a giggle. It was never in the plans and only actually came about, according to Ammerschäger, because a rich Swiss guy wanted an all-wheel drive 3-Series Convertible, but the track widths were different and the M3's wider arches were the only ones that got the job done.

People bought them, though, but they really shouldn't have because they were crap. Actually, for their day, they weren't crap. They're just crap by today's rigidity standards in convertibles.

It's slower than the coupe, obviously, but when the roof is down, hitting a bumpy section of road in the M3 Convertible feels like riding a jelly on its journey from fridge to table. Every corner of the car, including the windscreen header, shakes and wobbles at different times and different frequencies and it's impossible to really point the thing accurately on the road.

Yuck.

E30 M3 Sport Evo
Now this is better -- a bit. For the German championship in 1990, BMW stretched both the bore and the stroke out to make the M3 Sport Evo into a ripping, snorting 2.5-litre four cylinder. Well, ripping and snorting is all relative.

You can pick them by their double-decker rear wings, and they punched out 175kW at 6750, though the torque was little changed at a meager 240Nm. And they also had a three-level adjustable suspension system, none of which ever quite became good fun, though the Sport mode was discernibly faster.

The steering was a touch better when we tested it on track in Spain, and the whole car just felt like it needed a bit more grunt than what it had. It was more trustworthy, for sure, but it still had clumsy transitions from one direction to the other and it still wasn't fun...

So the lesson is: don't trust the Poms!

And, once again, time has passed it by. The E36 was, in Spain, a huge disappointment. It's steering felt slow and provided little feedback. Its cabin looked old. Its body rolled ponderously and it changed direction with the grace of a blindfolded dog rounding up sheep. In a forest.

One thing that hasn't faded, though, is its glorious straight-six cylinder engine. This thing had 210kW in 1992 -- and that was a pretty serious number back when a Friday-built Holden 5.0-litre V8 might give you 160kW.

It's still a serious engine today, and the M3's relatively tall gearing lets you pluck a cog and let it spin so sweetly and freely and joyfully through all of its timbre changes and its hard, punching acceleration.

When you drove these things from new, you would change gear too early, because it just didn't seem possible that an engine this size could spin up to 7000rpm with so little effort. You still have to tell yourself to let it hit its redline first before shifting.

No other atmo engine of the day could match its specific power (97hp/litre) or its specific torque and it sprinted to 100km/h in six seconds neat. And feels like it still does. BMW limited it to 250km/h and there's no doubting this car could still easily rub its head on its limiter. We were lucky, though, getting the proper engine and not the rehashed 525i engine the Americans got in their M3s.

At 1460kg, the E36 M3 was also far heavier than its predecessor, and in cornering, most of that extra weight feels like it's somewhere in the roof or the bootlid. Or even in the C-pillars.

There's a massive roll at the front end on turn-in, then a flop at the rear on the exit and it can easily become unsettled enough to oversteer anywhere in the corner. On high-speed transitions, you have to be super smooth because one false input will leave you with a big slide to catch.

Even the move up to 17-inch rubber doesn't help the handling, which is at best ponderous.

But, oh, that engine...

E36 M3 3.2
This car was approached with trepidation at Ascari. I had expected to adore the E30 M3 and didn't. I expected to be blown away with a revisit to the E36 and was, but for the wrong reasons.

But the E36 3.2 was the first M3 I really tested as a youngster and I loved it. It wouldn't do to have my heart broken twice in one day... My concern was misplaced -- I can assure you, it's still a car to love.

It wasn't just that the E36 picked up another 200cc in 1995, it picked up a full suspension overhaul as well. And it's this suspension overhaul, as much as the 236kW and 350Nm of torque, that defined the evolution E36.

It's still brilliant. The only thing that feels remotely old about it is the slowness of the constant-rate steering over its first 90 degrees of turn-in. Other than that, it tips in brilliantly, with poise, agility and the promise of no-pain. It settles into long, grippy bends, then punches out the other side with superb assurance.

High-speed direction changes that felt cumbersome in the E36 feel like they've had a train-track put in just for you in this car.

It flits and dances and sparkles and attacks. It's at once trustworthy and tactile and fun. You can turn off its traction control and let it take you on massive, controllable tyre-smoking drifts... Or you can leave the electronics to figure it out.

There's no body roll to speak of anywhere, it was actually 20kg lighter than the car it replaced and it's the sort of car that just begs you to give it more of everything.

It's also got a six-speed manual (the E36 was a five-speeder), so the gearing's closer, too. Not that it needs it, because it hits harder and revs higher (to an astonishing 7400rpm) and loses none of the E36's sweetness or sparkle in getting there. In fact, this was the first double VANOS BMW, so it not only revved higher than the 3.0-litre, but it had more torque which arrived much earlier and it used less fuel to boot.

The 3.2 slashes the acceleration to 100km/h to 5.5 seconds and rips across a standing kilometre in 24.7 seconds. This is more than respectably fast, even today.

Oh, yes. This one, the E36 M3 3.2, this is a car for the ages. It's still brilliant.

Just make sure you find a six-speed manual and forget all about this being the first SMG sequential-shifting BMW.

The M3's wheels had moved up to 18-inchers, and I remember when I first drove it. It was on a track and it was a hoot. You could chuck the M3 in at preposterous sideways angles and you'd never worry that it was out of control, because it sort of liked being that way.

The engine now produced 252kW, spinning happily right out to 7900rpm. It was so technically sophisticated that it had lights that warned you when you should shift up and they automatically moved as the fluids and metal bits got hotter.

It was stronger in the midrange, too, with 365Nm at 4900rpm and it gave up 105 horsepower per litre thanks in part to a throttle body for every cylinder.

The E46 introduced the M Differential lock, to give it more reliable punch out of a corner, and had electronic driver aids, like Driving Dynamic control, to let you choose how aggressive you wanted all the settings to be.

It had another development of SMG introduced (largely unsuccessfully in the E36) too. This had sensors in the sequential gear lever that activated the clutch when your hand touched it, or you could use the paddles on the steering wheel, and it also had a launch-control system.

And yet, for all that, something didn't quite add up. On most racetracks we went to, a Boxster S, with around 60kW less, would comfortably stick with the M3 and even outpaced it on some of the more flowing ones.

Today, those doubts came back. Sophisticated and all as it was in the drivetrain, it really didn't have that much grip. And, at 1570kg, it felt like it had lost some agility and some of its tactile directness.

It was, we found, much more of a handful on the road and a bundle of oversteery madness on the track (admittedly, its tyres were reasonably run in when we got to it). That's all well and good, if that's what you're expecting, but it couldn't match the second-generation E36's exquisite balance and poise.

There were times when we'd feed in the power coming out of slow corners only for the E46 to explode in unwanted tyre smoke and time-wasting opposite lock. There were other times when we'd be waiting for the front end to bite and it felt a little tippy-toey on high-speed direction changes.

But it was fast, hauling to 100km/h in 5.2 seconds and blasting over 1km in 24.2 seconds. But by now, the M3 had clearly changed, growing up and growing out.

And with its successor moving to a V8 engine, it was clearly leaving a hole for something younger and more cheerful, something about the size of the original M3 but with the E36 3.2's balance and charm.

One day soon, we'll be able to tell you if the 1 Series M is that car...

Check out our first ride in the 1 Series M here

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