Quote:
Originally Posted by varsity
Pull yourself together, man.
Zoom out for a minute. M3 has always been based on a mass-market entry-level luxury vehicle. Many hard parts are shared. Significant differences are engine, suspension, and, more recently, exterior. M3 is a great car both on paper and on real-world streets. Everyone agrees to this. Every generation has been really good at what it's purported to do. I personally think E36 is the low point because of US v. ROW engine, but that's obviously an opinion rather than a fact.
But when you compare M3 to cars built on purpose-built sports chassis, like 911 or 458 or Elise, the M3 loses luster. Here's an example: on my first E46 M3, the front wheel bearings were shot after 20k miles, probably 7k of which were on the track. This wasn't a defect; it was just that the bearings were designed for more pedestrian use. Another: brakes are perennial weak point. Even after ducting, brass bushings, race pads, stainless lines, and SRF, my stock brakes significantly faded after 15 laps around Sebring in the summer. I thought all cars were like this until I started to look at 911s. All cars aren't like this. Porsches can actually handle this kind of usage without resorting to paragraph-long mod lists. So can modern Lotus as well as Ferrari. Candidly, I think that's the end of the list.
This is why Porsches cost more than BMWs. You're getting a car full of superior hard parts that the eyes don't see and drivers forget about because they're too busy driving rather than troubleshooting. Some guys love tinkering with their cars, and that's great for them.
I'm not at all knocking M3s. They're great - maybe the best - for what they portend to be: sporty street cars suitable for everyday use at a relatively reasonable price. But M3 is inherently a compromise car because it's built off passenger-car chassis rather than a sports car one. Add that to inferior hard parts, and you'll see why guys go nuts over Porsches and Ferraris over BMWs.
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Gotta hand it to you. That was an objective post.
