BMW’s M3 was born for the race track and, following racing rules, has now evolved with more power and less weight – Performance Car
Subtlety was out. After several false starts, there was clearly only one way to get BMW M3 Evolution number 475 off the line and down Millbrook’s mile straight at its scintillating best.
And that was sheer brute force. Whip the screaming four-cylinder up to within a few hundred revs of its 7000rpm red line, then simply dump the clutch. Howling their hearts out, the massive Pirelli P700s struggled for grip on the tarmac, the car’s rear end drifting almost in slow motion from side to side as it wrestled with that suddenly applied 220bhp. As grip slowly overcame slip, the engine dipped from 7000rpm to 5000rpm, then held momentarily before soaring again as the BMW speared down the track.
The awkward dog-leg shift out of first was forced through even before the wheels had stopped spinning. The revs dipped but the engine was slap bang on its torque peak and the M3′s charge undiminished. Through 60mph in just 6.7 seconds, then a straight pull back on the stick to third and peak torque once more.
Another of those awkward dog-leg shifts slammed through with no time to worry about the vagaries of the Getrag gearbox’s sloppy gate – but a quiet sigh of relief, nonetheless, that it had risen to the occasion well enough – and we were on to 100mph in a decimal over 18 seconds; the punch of acceleration still following forcibly through.
Brake hard and true as the end of the straight looms up, then swing round for the run back and another full-revs, clutch-dumping start. But don’t get the wrong impressions. The brutality of our test track treatment was not ignorant but calculated. And a tribute to the remarkable abilities of BMW’s little racer.
As any tester will tell you, the technique for standing starts in a powerful, rear-drive car is usually the simplest of all to master. Half revs, drop the clutch and you’ll have all the wheelspin you need for a fast getaway – too much quite often.
Not in the M3. At half revs, the big Pirellis stay glued like barnacles to the track surface. Try a thousand higher. Little better, the grip breaks, wheel spin for a year or two, then the revs fade as the tyres claw their footholds back. Try again – peak torque revs; that usually does it. But no, the wheels spin for a few yards more, grip again and the engine fades.
And so it has to be sheer force; peak power revs, and at last we get it away with the right balance of spin an traction to keep the engine boiling until momentum has picked up.
The M3 story we’ve discovered in this single exercise is as much about grip as it is about power. The Evolution version may have an extra 200bhp at its disposal, but it’s the prodigious grip that allows it to use the power with impunity. It is this grip, in the end, that impresses even more than the car’s performance.
‘Evolution’ is one of those motor sport terms little understood by anyone who is not both a member of Mensa and enjoys the FIA rule book as bedtime reading.
In layman’s language, having produced 5000 examples of a saloon car in order for it to be homologated as a Group A competition car, a manufacturer can then ‘evolve’ 500 improved versions from that original – stretching whatever the strictly defined guidelines for so doing might be as far as possible of course.
Needless to say, this process also creates an instant, limited edition collector’s piece – identified in the case of the M3 Evolution by a numbered plate riveted to the centre console.
The Sierra Cosworth, you will recall, evolved into the RS500 Cosworth via a series of nifty changes that opened up an Aladdin’s Cave of rich possibilities for the race-track. A massive new turbocharger and a second rail of fuel injectors (not even connected up on the road cars) were all ready to activate a whalloping power improvement by a simple engine management chip change, while a set of additional rear suspension pick-up points (again unused on the road version) allowed track tuners ample opportunity to re-work the semi-trailing rear end into something more sophisticated. And finally, revised spoilers reduced drag and increased rear end down-force.
It was, in truth, not so much evolution as revolution. By comparison, the M3 has been through a very modest development step. The engine is substantially altered, true enough; it has new pistons, increasing compression ratio from 10.5 to 11.0:1, a lighter flywheel, revised camshafts, a new air intake system and a re-chipped Motronic management unit. But such changes are much less significant in competition terms than Ford’s evolution changes for the Cosworth.
A naturally aspirated engine could not have its output radically increased as easily a Ford’s turbo-unit could, and the 300bhp-odd of the Group A M3 engine is only likely to rise by 20-30bhp as a result of these mods.
The road-tune engine gains just 20bhp, too, it 220bhp being developed at the same 6750rpm as the original. Torque, likewise, changes only a little from 177 to 181lb ft maximum at the same 4750rpm. To take advantage of the added power, the Evolution’s final drive has also been stretched slightly’ from 3.25 to 3.15:1.
The engine itself is, of course, the durable iron-blocked four-cylinder which has been at the core of so much of BMW’s competition work since it first saw lift in the BMW 1500 back in the 1960s.
In M3 guise it became a short-stroke high revving 2302cc unit, featuring a version of the twin-cam, four-valve-per-cylinder head used in the bigger, six-cylinder M-cars. Its Evolution development is identifiable at once from the vividly finished white cam cover and air collector, which sport the blue, mauve and red stripes of BMW Motorsport.
But, from a racing viewpoint, the significant alterations are those which the uninformed observer might well not spot. A delicate boot lip aerofoil beneath the existing spoiler improves downforce by between 10 and 15 percent, and 22lb of weight have also been pared from the rear of the car by substitution of a lighter boot lid, wing and bumper supports, as well as the use of thinner glass in the rear screen and rear side windows. Wheels and tyres are also larger than the original M3′s: 225/45ZR16 Pirellis on 7 ½ J alloy wheels, though these were already available as an option in place of the standard 205/55s and 7-inch rims.
In truth, the extra power is not really discernible on the road; it takes track testing to spot the differences – for they are small, being partially hidden by that slight rise in overall gearing, which is in slight rise in overall gearing, which is in turn offset by the lower profile tyres.
Confused? Well, in comparison with the standard car (if a machine like the M3 could ever be termed ‘standar’), the Evolution proved 0.2 seconds quicker to 60mph, a difference that had widened to just over two seconds by 100mph (18.1 against 20.5).
Top speeds are even harder to compare for we tested the original car abroad on the autobahn, where it reached 145.9mph. Around Millbrook’s oval, the Evolution averaged 144.8mph and was clearly losing some speed through tyre scrub. How much? That’s hard to say, but the original M3 has been ‘maxed’ round Millbrook by others at between 136 and 139mph, so BMW’s 152mph claim for the Evolution looks fair enough.
But so what if the Evolution is only marginally quicker, the M3 in either guise is a magnificent performer. The four-cylinder engine is a real race-bred screamer, though with enough docility to make it a perfectly mannered road unit, too.
It will pull smoothly from below 2000rpm, though it only starts to feel at all meaningful once it is nearing 4000. From here on – it flies! The real red meat of performance, though, is reserved for the final 2500rpm from just below 5000 to the rev limiter which cuts off an engine that is still in full flight at 7300rpm.
The rather boomy exhaust note of the short-stroke four turns into a throaty howl and that acceleration which had started to impress a thousand revs earlier just keeps striving on.
Such an eager, high-revving power unit makes road driving not only thrilling but remarkably fuss free, too. The M3 has power and torque reserves sufficient to make gearchanging less than a priority. On a country secondary, it will punch out if corners and swallow up the short straights between in third, while on quicker roads, fourth will carry it comfortably through fast sweepers and simply devour those longer straights.
But as we said at the beginning, given the chance, the Getrag box’s close, tight ratios can maintain the M3 at maximum momentum – when you’ll discover it’s a stunningly quick machine indeed. To well beyond 100mph acceleration just doesn’t falter and only as it nears maximum speed does the M3 begin to show off.
The response, too, is instantaneous. Shift up, bang the throttle hard down gain and the engine’s bite is immediate quite the opposite of a turbo’s slightly reluctant pick-up.
The gearbox isn’t the easiest to use – especially as one is shifting with the right or rather the wrong – hand. First is out in a dog-leg while a strongly spring-loaded gate separates second/third from fourth/fifth.
It’s one of those shifts that is all too easy to fumble over when driving casually – forget the spring loading and you often wrong-slot. But, driven in anger, everything comes good. And that, of course, is what counts. All this would be to no avail, though, without the M3′s terrific traction. You can slam the throttle down hard and early on the exit of a corner and those big Pirellis will just bite in and grip. There’s no trace of wheelspin or ___ twitching, just the instant launch of a Lynford Christie craving his starting blocks.
It’s a combination of traction and response that makes for sparkling motoring. You can drive the M3 Evolution like the racer it is: brake hard, turn in, lower on, blast out.
It appears just to flow through bends – the hallmark of greatness. There’s little body roll, good feel through the assisted steering and the chassis balance is impeccable. It will understeer turning in – quite noticeably if you turn in too late and too hard – but once the power is back on it simply squirts through the corner with impunity.
And the M3 is so easy to drive, too. Grippy leather-edged sports seats hold you tightly in place and the left-hand driving position is almost inch perfect. ____ one that inspires instant confidence; ____ pedals are properly spaced for heel-to-toe shifts and there’s a massive footrace down alongside the clutch. All-round visibility is good, too.
If there’s a fault to be found when driving the M3 (and fault finding hardly seems fair in a car that behaves so beautifully) then it’s that the steering struggles to keep up with the chassis’s ability. At 3.6 ___ between locks it is much higher geared than the standard 325′s awful 4.5 turns, but it is still not really quick enough. Flicking the car through a complex of tight bends demands rather too much work at the wheel and you miss the Cosworth’s steering quickness.
Brakes are more than up to the job, however. The car stops hard and true; there’s no weaving, and not a hint of fade. And on a dry surface, you’d have to be literally screeching to a halt before the characteristic pedal thump-back of ABS made itself known.
The inevitable consequence of such crisp, racer-like road manners is that the M3′s ride is hard – too hard for some, no doubt – but despite the stiffness and its associated wheel thump, even on rough country roads it remains stable and tidy, with little or no bump steer.
Our car, in fact, came with three-setting, drive-adjustable dampers – an electronic system developed by BMW in associated with Boge. The three settings (altered by a turn-wheel at the base of the gearstick) roughly correspond to Sporting, Normal M3 settings and Comfort – with the last automatically up-grading itself to Normal at higher speeds.
The differences between the settings are not as great as might be expected. In fact at first you’re barely aware of them. The M3′s springing is stiff, and the wide, low tyres noisy even on the softest setting. But try each setting for longer and differences do emerge in the way the car copes with various types of road imperfection. In Comfort, for instance, the car is less jolty at low speed, but go faster over and undulating road and you notice a slight floatiness that isn’t in tune with the hard demands made by fast motoring.
The Sport setting is harsher than the standard as well, and it can become quite unpleasantly jarring over had surfaces. Does it improve the overall handling balance? That’s hard to say; it would need a lengthy back to back test over a variety of roads to come to a firm conclusion. So perhaps at a costly £1388, it’s an option that doesn’t conclusively prove its worth. Not that the car is short of possible options; ours had another £2000 worth: electric sunroof (£692), headlamp cleaning (£288), computer (£337), electric front windows (£383) and heating control (£149), and anti-theft locks (£369).
As you can see, the M3 Evolution’s hefty £26,960 price tag pays for that purebred, competition pedigree and not for a great deal in the way of added luxury.
Naturally, you do still get superb build quality with the M3 Evolution – homologation special it might be, but this is still a BMW – but for the exclusive club of 40 British buyers who’ll take one home this year, the most important part of the car will probably be that aluminum plate with its limited edition serial number.
It’s a collector’s piece from the start, but certainly not one that should be tucked away for safe keeping. For this is the sports saloon brought to perfection: for sheer driving pleasure, you won’t beat it.
Related posts:
May 3, 2010
1986 - 1989, Articles