For 30 years, every new BMW M3 has lived in the shade
of the iconic original. We put munich’s 2015 turbomonster against its world
beating. Forebear: one built the legend, the other reframes it and the
stopwatch doesn’t lie.
Above 6000 rpm, the engine churned out a hard-edged,
miniature-Hoover Dam honk and ripped to redline in a lively pounce. There was
slightly more grip than power, brakes that seemed barely necessary, killer
suspension travel. If you tried to surprise the car on the curbs, it just
shrugged it off, put motion on the back tires, and gave you all the time in the
world to catch it. It was like indoor karting—I could’ve written a book between
each slide and correction.
On the back straight, I notched the shift lever into the
dog-ring ’box’s fifth gear. The data said the M3 hit 134 mph into braking,
still pulling but the tach needle slowing down. (The F80 touched 142 in the
same place, accelerating like mad.)
Call me crazy, but blitzing around Mid-Ohio, the E30 was so
relaxed, it flirted with dull. I began to wonder if there was something wrong.
Then I glanced in the mirror and had a vision of 40 cars in a buzz-saw pack,
Sierra Cosworths and Mercedes 2.3-16s and M3s, all out for blood. And it hit
me: Professional-grade race cars often feel like tools, but I’d never met one
so fatigue-free and eager to get out of the way. What I was seeing was the
difference between an ordinary pro car and one for the ages: so purposely
docile at the limit, anything short of an epic, fender-banging throwdown just
felt like phoning it in.
Then I glanced in
the mirror and had a vision of 40 cars in a buzz-saw pack, Sierra Cosworths and
Mercedes 2.3-16s and M3s, all out for blood.
The M3 dove into the track’s Madness section, an off-camber,
up-and-over right-hander with three stories of elevation change. I trailed
brake in with my left: foot, massaged the power on, and felt the car pop itself
over the crest and whip-crack down the hill in this impossible little
half-sideways dance. And I may have had only one hand on the wheel, because I
was slapping my left knee over and over and laughing quietly in stars truck,
grown-man awe of how easy everything was.
The M3 dove into
the track’s Madness section, an off-camber, up-and-over right-hander with three
stories of elevation change.
I pulled in a lap later, shut off the engine, and looked at
Baruth, sitting on the wall.
“And?” he said.
I could have told him, but it would have sounded cliché.
Everything I wanted to say had already been written about some other, lesser
car.
Jack grinned like an ax murderer.
“No,” I said. “It’s better than that.”
So the legend lives up to its reputation, and the upstart
matches almost every punch. We hoped this test would be close, but no one
thought it would come down to tenths.
What isn’t close are the philosophies—E30 as scalpel, F80 as
cleaver. For a certain kind of enthusiast, the former has come to represent a
platonic ideal—evocative street car, race car even pros get misty over.
(Italian ace Roberto Ravaglia, who took the E30 to more wins than anyone else,
called it “the best race car I ever drove”) That mix is rare in any era, but
the E30 is a snapshot from a special moment, a time when major manufacturers
took gutsy chances.
Just 5115 E30 M3s were sold in America, now the model’s
largest market. BMW undoubtedly drew lessons. The engineers found they could
craft a gloriously compromised street car that would dominate on the track. The
executives discovered that such projects only make financial sense in the long
run, building a brand, because purists don’t run the world, and uncompromised
cars sell like cold toast. Which is how we arrived at the current M3, a machine
that accomplishes the same task as its mercenary forebear, in a way everyone
understands.
Could BMW make a car like the E30 again? Of course. Is it
likely to? The world is too different. But while the E30’s moment didn’t last,
the takeaway did: The new M3 is raw, angry, and genuinely special. And for
that, we should be grateful.
The new M3 is raw,
angry, and genuinely special. And for that, we should be grateful.
