By the CAR road test team
05 January 2009 11:00
Long-term test hello - 1 January 2009
We get a lot of nice cars to drive here at CAR, yet still I hold onto to my ageing, slightly battle-scarred E36 BMW M3. Seems there’s no substitute for being able to thrash your own car absolutely senseless. And this car does love to be thrashed.
I bought it back in 2001 with a healthy 157,000 miles on the clock and a full
My car is the early 3.0-litre model. A few years back I bought the later 3.2-litre version and ran the pair back-to-back for six months, the idea being that I’d sell the 3.0-litre when I ran out of cash. I never did (sell the 3.0-litre, that is).
Why? The 3.0-litre engine is smoother, only marginally less powerful (286bhp plays a claimed 321bhp, though dyno tests apparently rarely back up the later car’s claimed bhp), and much stronger – thanks partly to the early car’s single VANOS (variable valve timing system on the inlet cam only) as opposed to the later car’s troublesome double VANOS. The five-speed gearbox is also smoother than the later six, while the early cars are obviously cheaper too.
So I kept the 3.0-litre. But it wasn’t perfect. The suspension was quite soft – good for ride quality, bad for ultimate poise. In fact, I found the car very tricky on the limit, offering masses of grip before letting go a bit too suddenly. What’s more, the brakes were mushy, and the steering was awful.
I set out to gradually improve these flaws, then, with predictable inevitability, got carried away. My first visit was to Birds UK, based in Uxbridge. They swapped the standard suspension for KW Variant 3 coilovers, and also fitted Hartge anti-roll bars and a Hartge strut brace. Naturally, the ride is a lot firmer now, but it’s not quite the compromise you’d expect: it’s still got an acceptable amount of compliance, while body roll is largely eliminated and – when tweaked to my spec – the threshold of grip is lowered to make breakaway more progressive, controllable and, well, enjoyable. The adjustable bump and rebound settings mean I could dial in more compliance if I used the car on road more.
The next step was to ditch the brakes. I went for – again via Birds – a six-piston AP set-up that is nothing short of phenomenal – my favourite mod on the entire car. Pedal feel is reassuringly solid and these brakes withstand lap after lap of huge stops from the fastest straights. Brilliant. Unfortunately, they also necessitated a switch to the rather tasty 18in BBS RX alloys, which I wrapped in 225/45 ZR18 Uniroyal Rainsport rubber – a very durable tyre that really does cut through standing water while also offering good traction in the dry.
And that’s when I started to get carried away. The black leather interior was all very well, but it was too slippery for track work, and it was heavy too. I stripped it out and sold it for £600 on eBay back in 2006. I also stripped all the boot and all the trim from the rear seat area. Then in went a pair of lightweight fixed Recaro buckets, followed by a bolt-in rollcage from Rollcentre Racing. Rollcentre hadn’t done an E36 before, but they took my car in, measured it up and bent the tubing to suit. From there I went to Julian Smith – a good friend and an extremely resourceful mechanic who runs Garage D in Watford. I got a call at 5am one Saturday morning saying the cage was in – he’d worked through the night to get it ready for a trackday that I thought I’d missed. My wife was delighted.
Since then I’ve been slowly trying to perfect the package. Birds junked the standard limited slip diff (25 percent lock-up), and upgraded it with a 45 percent job instead – purely because I enjoy doing smoky skids. When the clutch gave up I replaced it with an uprated item from AP, while Garage D had an ingenious solution to the steering. During my time with the 3.2-litre car I’d noticed its steering felt more positive. This was largely thanks to its altered – as standard – front suspension geometry. Garage D somehow knew that swapping the 3.0-litre strut tops for 3.2-litre items (but installed so the right one went where the left one should be, and vice versa) would give much the same effect. It does, though the steering is still a weak link.
And that’s how things stand for now. Seven years on and I still love climbing in this car. It’s been to trackdays in Britain (Snetterton, Silverstone, Rockingham), Ireland (Mondello), Germany (the Nurburgring) and Holland (Zandvoort). Yes, it’s slightly ratty, but my M3’s got character and it’s full of memories too – in the rare moments I clear it out I find A-Z maps of Amsterdam, passes for the Nordschleife, parking fines from Bruges.
I have another trip planned to Zandvoort soon, so I’ll give you a full update when I’m back.
By Ben Barry
Logbook | |
| Total Mileage Since Last Report Overall MPG Since Last report Fuel Costs Other Costs Highs Lows | 213,000 miles n/a I don't want to know n/a I dread to think what the upgrades have cost Having an unbreakable M3 The steering still isn't great |
| Previous reports | |
| 1 January 2009 | First report |
