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Originally Posted by varsity
Pull yourself together, man.
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My comment was sarcastic...not meant to be taken seriously...
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Originally Posted by varsity
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.
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I thought BMW M cars were historically made from unique parts that differed from the normal series cars. For example, the e92 m3 had different suspension, engine, body, exhaust from the regular 3 series. I'm no expert on BMW history, so someone please chime in if I'm wrong. And I thought M Performance was historically focused more on performance than on luxury.
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Originally Posted by varsity
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.
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7k of track use seems like a lot, for any car. I'd expect any car, regardless of the initial buy price to show some wear and tear after that kind of use. Are you saying a 911 doesn't have any kind of issues after 7k of track use? I don't know porsche's history that well, so someone well versed will have to chime in here...
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Originally Posted by varsity
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.
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Yeah, I've heard of the stock brakes on the M3 being an issue. Don't know if that was ever addressed in later years of the e92 m3. Though I do know plenty of people track their M3's without buying what you referred to as "paragraph long list of mods". The M3 was intended to be trackable out of the box, and with the exception of a few issues, everyone agrees that it pretty much is.
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Originally Posted by varsity
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.
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Dude, I get it...the 911 is a much better car in stock form than the m3 and even than the m3 gts. I've got no arguments with that...My only point, which is really my
opinion is that the increase in performance and driving experience you get with the 911 does not justify the high cost. I think BMW gives you good performance, not better than the 911, but still good for a much more fair price (not factoring in American muscle just in case someone decides to bring that up for the 100th time today).
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Originally Posted by varsity
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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It is a compromise car, but I would argue that chassis is still a sports car chassis, maybe not as sporty as the 911, but still sporty. The E92 M3 chassis, though it resembled the regular 3 series was still a different chassis...am I wrong on that? And though the m3's parts were inferior to those of the 911, they are still very good...for the price you pay...which is the point of my original post.
Porsche has the option of getting high-end carbon ceramic brakes...they cost around $8-9k. They look awesome, I've heard they perform really well and are durable, but like everything else in the world of cars they eventually break down and need to be fixed or totally replaced....$8-9k for brakes + labor fees just seems like a lot to me, regardless of how well they perform.