M. The pride and poster boy (or girl if you’d like) of the BMW GmbH. And according to them, it is also the most powerful letter in the world (catchy marketing). It’s no coincidence then that the BMW M3 is one of the most renowned performance oriented models in the world. Known for its racing heritage, BMW seems to have perfected the merging of a track car with one that can be driven from home to work without removing the German luxury expected from BMW. Many enthusiasts view the BMW M3 series as the “best” sports car in the world; not the “fastest”, “coolest”, or “best bargain”, but just the “best” that every new performance car will eventually be compared against.
The E30 M3 was the beginning of the the M3 legacy back in 1985 when it was first shown to the public. It went on the sale the following year in 1986, making the M3 over 20 years old. BMW is currently on their 4th M3 model (the E92 chassis), and yet the model that started it all is what I’m focusing on right now. Not that the later generations are worse than the E30, but the E30 is the most “raw” than the rest due to less stringent emission/crash laws back then, and the fact that the only aim of the model was reach 5,000 sales due to homologation rules. There were no expectations of a certain amount of comfort or performance, nor were there any sales expectations from the higher ups. Unbound by expectations and rules, the E30 was as close and raw as you could get to a race car. This is why it is loved by so many; that untamed feeling and unbound limitations are felt in the engineering, unlike so many cars today.
Here are a few pics courtesy of a Xbox 360 and a copy of Forza 3:
and a few more artistic pics of the M3:
