What should an M3 be like – refined and quick, or raw and thrilling? Touring car ace Steve Soper chooses between new E36 M3 and the old E30 M3 – Autocar
Progress is a strange animal, not least because it’s such a tough one to measure accurately. I don’t mean in cold, statistical terms – that’s easy. What I’m talking about is real progress, as in Mondeo succeeds Sierra, Omega replaces Carlton progress. The sort that is beyond reasonable questioning, no matter how fine the tooth comb.
Don the starched lab coat and point the microscope at BMW’s new M3, for example, and no matter which way you cut it, this is one car that would appear to have the magic word stamped right through to its very core. So why did we, as a magazine bursting with enthusiasts, find it so hard truly to admire the latest M3, in the way we had so passionately its slower but more memorable predecessor?
The consensus was that despite its incredible point-to-point ability and vastly superior performance, refinement and economy, the 286bhp six-cylinder M3 had sold its soul and gone soft in favour of broader market appeal. And that, in turn, had drained away a fatal amount of the original’s delicious appeal.
But were we missing something? Did the new M2 posses a spectrum of talents so far advanced that they had shot over our heads unnoticed? Or we were right in thinking that BMW had, in metal, administered a death blow to a legend?
We had to know. So we got the current M3 back and put it head to head with the sweetest example of its most immediate predecessor we could find: an Evolution II M3 plucked fresh from BMW GB’s historic fleet with just 5000miles on its clock. And to add a third dimension we got touring car ace and BMW aficionado Steve Soper involved. If he couldn’t help us find the answer, surely no one could.
As the keeper of “about three old M3s and 16 or 17 M5s over the years”, Soper knows a thing or two about M cars and what makes them different from everyday BMWs.
“I used to drive my old M3 from Monaco, where I was living, up to Germany to do a race, and for the first hour or so, up in hills where the roads were all twisty and you could have some fun, it was great. The feedback you got from the car was superb. But three hundred miles later I used to think, what the hell am I doing, why didn’t I fly?”
But wasn’t that the part of the old car’s pull? Because it was noisier than most and you had to concentrate on every mile, two hands on the wheel as it bubbled away between your fingers, you felt special in an old M3. As if every journey had a sense of purpose and occasion behind it.
Not necessarily. The way Soper sees it, which admittedly is very much from a company man’s standpoint (his wages for driving a works MW in the BTCC are rumoured to be between £300,000 and £350,000 a year), the old car’s more aggressive imagine, its spoilers, dog-leg gearbox and quasi-racer feel wasn’t, and still isn’t, something that everyone wants. “You and I might want that because we’re enthusiasts,” he said. “But if you’re 45, married and your wife has to drive the car as well, there’s no question that the new car is less compromised.”
But not everyone is supposed to like genuine M cars, are they? They’re supposed to be different from the herd, and therefore feel a touch removed from the ordinary on the road.
“Yes,” agrees Soper, “but if you’re in the business of selling cars, you’ve got to think more broadly than that.” And so we arrive at the crux of the matter, just like that.
Which is this: the old M3 was a homologation special, a total thoroughbred, and therefore bore about as much resemblance to a regular 3-series, over and under the skin, as a Lada Samara does to a Ferrari F40. So it couldn’t help but feel special. The lastest car, on the other hand, is little more than a top-of-the-range 3-series with a powerful engine and big brakes – a very quick interpretation of a 325i with a few discreet spoilers and a set of funked-over alloys to distance it visually from lesser members of the range.
And so it is when we take the two cars to Goodwood. The old car is slower – not surprising with a 50bhp disadvantage – and fails to deal as successfully with the heart-in-mouth bumps that punctuate at least two of Goodwood’s quicker bends, Madgwick and St. Mary’s. But, just like the Porsche 968 Club Sport in relation to the faster, theoretically more able Toyota Supra at last year’s handling day, the Evo is more fun, more rewarding. And, crucially, is more forgiving of our mistakes when we make them.
In the end, it’s all down to the steering. Without a doubt the new car’s body control and damper tuning are better than the Evo’s at Goodwood. As are its brakes, gear ratios, grip and stability through the fast corners. But its steering – that vital contact seam between fingers and blacktop – is hopeless next to the Evo’s, which bristles with feel and precision whereas the new car’s vague and lifeless.
But for Soper it’s not as simple as that. “Getting into the old car these days feels as if you’ve jumped back a step in time,” he says. “For me there’s too much feedback and not enough technology. It’s like trying to compare the lovely tactility you get with something like a 246 Dino with an F40. You can’t”
But being an enthusiast, is he not keener on the way old cars like the Dino and orginal M3 communicate their intentions more vividly than the new breed of rocketships, which, although faster point to point, simply aren’t as much fun as their predecessors?
“Technology is constantly moving forwards and you have to go with it. The old M3 is more honest, if you like, in that it provides you with a more genuine impression of its capabilities at low speed. But it doesn’t give you the confidence at high speed that the new one does and that’s where the technology comes into it.”
Soper goes on to draw an enlightening analogy: “Everyone wants something different. That’s why I want a red car and you want a blue one and why someone would buy a Lotus 7 and go out on a Sunday with the roof down and the old earmuffs on and I’d think they were raving bonkers.”
Fair enough. But given the increasingly anti-social stigma that surround ultimate speed these days, isn’t the amount of fun you can generate on your way to a destination far more important than the speed with which you get there for a sports car in the ‘90s? In which case, isn’t the old car’s more intimate driver/road relationship not only more appropriate but also more acceptable given that it is nowhere near as quick as the new car?
“It’s true you don’t have to physically drive the new car as much as the old one. But that’s because it does it all for you, which for me is a plus. It’s basically a fun Sunday car, the Evo. And in its day it was bloody good. But, as I said, things move on.
“I remember that as a 20 year old I had a Lotus Elan and I used to think it was the best car I’d ever owned. Really special. But a couple of years ago I was offered an immaculate Elan Sprint to buy, and I thought I’ve got to have this. What a lovely car to have some fun in. And I drove the thing and I couldn’t believe what a load of junk it was. An absolute load of rubbish. Maybe the trouble with new car is that it complements the driver so well, does everything so efficiently, that no one can appreciate exactly what it is capable of.”
Around Goodwood, that’s certainly not the case. Soper – profoundly, nauseatingly impressive at the wheel – does his stuff in both cars and is three and a half seconds a lap quicker in the new car (and in the process slashes a full two seconds from John Lyon’s unofficial 1min 33sec record, set in a Honda NSX in identical conditions a year earlier). But somehow lap times aren’t really what this is all about.
Soper couldn’t bring himself to agree with us, preferring the hushed serenity of the M5 that he trundled away into the rawness of the Evolution M3 that the rest of us marched towards when the day was through. But by then we were certain. Of the two M3s, that were sitting side by side in Goodwood’s paddock at the end of the day – one red, one yellow – only one was genuine article. And it wasn’t yellow.
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January 4, 2010
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