Good things take time to happen, they say. Alan and Rachel know this well, as they’ve been together for seven contented years. They have settled down in a pretty town on the Cornish coast. But all the time, Alan has harboured a secret passion, and when he finally got to realise his dream he added a second love to his happy household and became a very contended man indeed.

Like most sentient males of the right age, our man fell hook line and sinker for the M3 when it burst on to road and track in 1986. And with each successive evolution his passion deepened. Logically, 1990’s Evo Sport transfixed him. And so it should. The M3 only existed to satisfy BMW’s Touring Car ambitions – the road cars beign as much a necessity to homologated the box-arched wonder as a service to Munich’s petrol-headed roadgoing customers.

1990’s Evo Sport was the ultimate expression of the concept. Squeezing Mercedes-beating ability out of the E30 involved a car that – even in road trim – had 238bhp on call, from a 2.5 litre version of the superb twin-cam four-pot engine. The aerodynamic, package was a development of the Evo 2’s, with both the front and rear spoilers being adjustable three ways to trim the car during practice.

Trainspotters will tell you that the front wings of this model are unique, being slightly wider than ever before, as BMW fancied shoehorning even wider wheels than before underneath them in race situations.

The Evo Sport was so utterly a homologation car that it was only produced between January and March 1990 and just 600 were made. It was a car to bow down before, and most of us did. That includes Alan. He might only have been 12 years old at the time, but he still wanted one.

Most of us harbour a deep-seated desire to own one of these cars, and toy occasionally with the idea of buying one as used values plummet. The editor and I periodically discuss chopping in our Tourings for decent, cheap M3s before realising that 30,000 miles a year are much less frenetically passed with a relaxed six murmuring away under the bonnet than a competition-bred four just begging to be flogged to the redline. And, as we need our driving licenses to stay in work in this business….

Not so Alan. “He doesn’t drink or smoke,” said his mate Marcus, along for the photo shoot. “But he has this vice. And when he wants something, he plans for it, works fo it, and get it. Me, I’ve got vices, a really boring Escort and an overdraft, dammit.” The plans were hatched more than three years ago. Despite saving for a house, Alan was also filling a jar with change. And looking for a good Evo Sport. Well, he, Rachel and, for that matter, Marcus, have good jobs with Cornwall Country Council – he and Marcus work together in the IT department – but this is not an area of the country awash with dot.com money. Cornwall is also, as we found out during the six-hour trek down there, pretty far from most of England.

With enough cash saved for an Evo Sport, Alan began the search for his car resigned to a series of huge treks across the nation to view potential candidates. In the event, this lovely red example turned up in Saltash, just 40 miles along the coast.

“I couldn’t believe my luck when I found,” Alan recalls. “It hadn’t been abused, and had all the documentation I needed.” In fact, it hadn’t been in the country all that long, having passed most of its life in the hands of a very Germanic chap in Luxembourg, who’d obviously not parked it on the nearest street corner.

It had been imported by the man he bought it from, who had kept it all of 18 months. “He’s got a really low boredom threshold,” laughs Alan. “He was just selling it to move on to an M Coupé.”

The man’s obviously mad, but his lunacy provided rich pickings for Alan. One very happy day Rachel drove him along the coast, watched him hand over £15,000 and then tried vainly to follow him back home. After three years of saving, he was behind the suede-covered wheel of what many would argue is the best driving experience ever to snarl its way out of the Munich factory. He thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

And so he should. The wheel, gear-knob and seats are unique to the model, and each adds a little extra piece of enjoyment to the – let’s face it – already gargantuan amount of fun on offer. The unabused chassis was at taut as the day it was assembled, thanks to meticulous maintenance. There are so few cars that can be placed as precisely, that turn in so deftly, and can be balance so beautifully through a bend with the right foot. The Evo Sports were pretty well speeeed too, so Alan’s car has the bonus of air conditioning.

And Alan lives in Cornwall, where chronically twisty roads were invented. “Mind you,” he says, “we also survive down here on tourism, so the roads are unusable for most of the summer season. By the time they’re clear, it’s all rain and mud. But you can always go to Dartmoor in the early morning.”

I’d choose Saturday morning, I reckon. Get up at five, throw a cup of tea and some toast down your neck, then motor over to Dartmoor. It’d be light by the time you got there. You’d have a good hour of slingshotting the Evo Sport along some of the trickiest roads in the nation before the local communities woke up and began lumbering stinkily around on manure-encrusted tractors. At which point you return home, your mind clear of the working week you’ve left behind, refreshed and ready to enjoy the weekend.

Because, of course, the Evo’s arrival in the household meant that then there were three. “Rachel’s been really understanding about it,” he says, looking suddenly serious. “Because it has become, to a certain extent, her and the car.” That’s not an easy circle to square, is it, unless you go through life utterly oblivious to other peoples’ feelings thankfully, Alan’s not that way inclined. “But she still takes precedence. I’d be stupid if she’s didn’t….wouldn’t I?” Poor chap, he’s obviously had to think this one through quite hard.

What about the future though? An E36 M3 Evo perhaps? After all, the newer car’s advantages are devastatingly obvious. How’s a 3.2 litre, 24 valve six providing 321bhp, laid to tarmac via a six-speed sequential gearbox? Oh, and the M5’s floating calliper brakes to rein it in?

Well you can have it because, funnily enough, like many die-hard E30 M3 drivers, it doesn’t fit Alan’s idea of what the M3 is all about. “Power, that’s the theme, isn’t it?” he says. “Sure, the E36 has a great chassis, but there’s still just one stunt to the handling, isn’t there? And where in Cornwall has the room to do tail slides everywhere? The E30 is all about the art of driving, which is going to keep my attention for much, much longer.”

So much longer, in fact, that he can’t envisage ever wanting another car. As time goes on, he’ll continue the good work he’s been doing since October, replacing the bits of the Evo that have perished a bit over the last 11 years. A BMW inspection revealed a list of faults running three pages long, although it mainly consisted of entries such as: ‘glove-box torch – missing’. There was the odd piece of rubber looking tired, he though, and he’d love to renew the steering wheel and gearknob, whose suede is getting rather shiny.

He shows me where a piece of foam, designed to keep air flow off the edge of the front grille at high speed, is getting tired, and wonders where he’s going to find that particular, model-specific part.

There’s also been some tuning work taking place on the quiet. Not the full-on 500bhp the 2.5litre factory Evo racers boasted, but a much smoother torque curve thanks to remapping of the ECU by Motronic specialist AmD. This procedure is all about mapping the fuelling and ignition curves to specific engine in the name of efficiency and the benefits can be felt on most Motronic cars, whether they’re 320i Tourings or M3 Sport Evos.

There’s a fine line between attention to detail and madness, and as yet Alan hasn’t crossed it. I asked – innocently enough, I thought – if he was going to show the car in concours competitions when all the remaining details had been sorted out. He looked faintly offended, which relieved me no end.

Of course, there’s always the worry that, once he’s got the car completely right, he’ll lose interest and have to sell it. It does happen, after all. But it sounds pretty unlikely. And what else goes and handles like the Evo Sport? I suspect it’s perfectly safe in his garage for a while yet. Of course, once he’s driven the E46 M3, maybe he’ll start saving again, and start a collection.

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I’ve just come back from the BMW Car Club’s November track day at Bedford Autodrome and have reached a conclusion. The E30 M3 is probably the best car BMW has ever built. It’s not the biggest, the fastest nor the most elegant, but at the limit on the track you can experience firsthand what that engine sounds like doing its chuff at the red line and what it feels like to be thrown into bends at whatever speed without the driver fighting the wheel.

You see, the M3 was born for the circuit and I’d be surprised if there’s still a single example that hasn’t done a few fast laps at some point – could you say the same for the E36 version?

History

The M3 was launched in 1986 and it had little, if anything, common with the regular E30. The shell was different with boxy wings front and rear plus a revised add-on rear screen surround to rake it back for aerodynamics, a raised plastic bootlid and a boncled-in front screen. Only the doors and bonnet were shared.

Mechanically, the M3 was also totally different. Special Boge dampers, revised springs and suspension geometry plus thicker anti-roll bars with different mounting points, quicktrack, bigger E28 5-Series inspired brakes with five-stud wheels and hubs meant that nothing can be swapped over individually – it’s all or nothing.

The M3’s engine was the S14 16-valve 2.3 litre unit developed from the M63SCSi’s 24-valve. Based on the M10 engine, this unit used a 10.5:1 compression, steel crank, twin-chain-driven cams and Bosch Motronic engine management to deliver 200bhp. Sat behind this on European-market cars was a Getrag 265 close-ratio dogleg gearbox with direct-drive top, taken from the M535i, plus the 24-valve M5 and M635CSi. Power was fed to a special ZP limited-slip diff with 25 per cent lock up and a tall 3.25 ratio. USA model M3s used a standard pattern 260 gearbox based on the manual 735i unit with the conventional gate pattern, plus a 4.1 ratio diff was fitted.

In terms of standard trim, the early cars used 7X15 BBS alloy wheels while inside, standard Recaro seats were trimmed in the same houndstooth cloth that adorned basic cars like the 316 and 518i. The special instrument cluster used a 260kph (160mph) speedo, and 8000 rpm tacho and an oil temperature gauge where the econometer used to sit. An M-Tech 1 steering wheel, tinted glass and electric mirrors and windows, sunroof and onboard computer were fitted to UK cars.

The M3 was intended to be a volume car to pay for the racing, so they were built at the regular Munich factory in left-hand-drive. The M3 Convertible came along in May 1988 while the first M3 Evo was made between February and May 1987. With 505 built, the 215bhp Evo 1 had brake cooling ducts instead of foglamps, a differently cylinder head, lighter bootlid, deeper front air dam and a small lip under the rear spoiler.

This was followed by the Evo 2 in March 1968 and production finish in May. Numbering just 501 examples, the Evo 2 used different cams and an 11.5:1 compression to reach 220bhp. With remapped Motronic and a lighter flywheel it certainly felt better and the white cam cover and air duct with the Motorsport stripes made it look a bit white socks and shellsuit.

With the final drive ratio upped to 3.15, acceleration stayed the same but the top speed was increased from 146 to 152mph. Lightening of the plastic body parts and thinner glass (except the windscreen) saved 10kg in weight, while the wheels increased in size to 7.5X16. Oh, and it came in Macau Blue, Nogaro Silver and Misano Red only.

Finally we’ve got the Evo 3 Sport, of which 600 were built between December 1989 and March 1990. A long-stroke crank gave the Evo Sport a 2.5 litre engine, and special cams, bigger valves, oil-cooled pistons and sodium-filled vlaves added up to a whopping 238bhp.

Looking much like the Evo 2, the 3 was distinguished by slightly wider front arches, 10mm lower suspension and additional aerodynamic flaps under the front and rear boot spoilers. Add a rubber strip between the bonnet and wings and allegedly reprofiled grille vanes.

Inside, the steering wheel was replaced by a new suede-covered M-Tech 2 version and the new illuminated gearknob and handbrake grip were similarly trimmed. Evo Sport seats were now wraparound buckets with harness holes plus red webbed seat belts. To save weight, the map lights and grab handles were removed and the fuel tank replaced by the 62 litre standard E30 item. Add a plaque inside plus M3 logo sill kick plates and that was the Evo 3.

BUYING THEM

Buying an E30 M3 depends on what you want to do with it, so we spoke to Peter Walsh at PMW (07970 645599) about the pitfalls. You can buy a sound early one for about four grand, have a few laughs and providing you’ve looked after it, sell it on again a year later for the same.

There were very few original BMW (GB) supplied cars around as they were special order, but there are plenty of European imports of varying quality.

Body

The M3 is excellent body-wise but the scuttle can rot in the corners below the screen and, as with any E30 BMW, look in the boot and around the rear numberplate lights for dampness. Doors, arches, and bonnets don’t rot, but it’s not resistant to accident damage so look at all four grand cheapie to hammer around on track days then it’s not such an issue, as long as it’s straight.

Panels are plentiful new and used but don’t expect 20 quid repro wings. Non-working central locking is often down to a failed relay which is hidden inside the A-post behind the passenger’s speaker.

Interior

This isn’t really a problem as so many cars have been trimmed in leather from new or retrimmed. Original cloth is nice though, and it’s rare too. On cars with air con, ensure it works but if it doesn’t and you’re not bothered, it’s not a big job to take it out and refit a second-hand E30 heater unit. You’ll save weight too. Most cars have electric windows and some have electric sunroofs but when do these ever go wrong?

What can go faulty is the electronic heater valve which is shared with the regular E30. They’re cheap, but changing them is a chore. As with any BMW, the service indicator lights can play, but fitting a recon board from somewhere like Hartlake (01634 294115) is cheap and easy.

Engine

The M3’s S14 engine is a work of art. It’s small, light, revs like a food mixer and as well as knocking out at least 195bhp it makes nice noises too. Trouble is, because the M3 was designed to be enjoyed, many have been ‘enjoyed’ that little bit too much.

The timing chain problem have been exaggerated. They rarely break as they are a double-row chain and therefore very strong. The reputation came from the earlier M5 and M6 cars with the single-row chain, which at 100,000 hard-driven miles cold give trouble, but the M3 is better.

The tensioners tend to wear before the chain and these let the chains flap which wears the chain wheels too. Hartlake and PMW reckon that 100,000 miles is a good point to fit a new chain as a precaution and doing it earlier might mean that you can reuse the wheels. Buy a car with 160,000 miles that hasn’t been touched and it’ll need doing. At 100,000 miles, an M3 that’s had oil changes every 6000 miles with good oil should be OK. It’s rare to have a chain let go without warning and they get noisy first. As for the rest of the engine, providing it’s been serviced, the bottom end is fine and the head doesn’t crack.

Running problems are normally caused by air leaks or a dead idle air valve which shorts out a circuit in the ECU, resulting in an 1100rpm idle speed. Air flow meters rarely fail and are specific to the 2.3, but 2.5 units are the same as the M535i’s.

PMW recommend using oils of 10W/30 grade or thicker. Ordinary Mobil 1 and other 0W or 5W oils are too thin and can cause chain tensioner rattle resulting in a £2500 bill from some specialists when a reversion to something like Duckhams Hypergrade was all that was needed. PMW charges about £1200 for the chain job and that doesn’t involve cylinder head removal.

Blowing from the exhaust manifold is normally due to studs unwinding from the head and this is easily put right as arc nasty aftermarket exhausts. New catalysts are silly money but just remove a dead one and sleeve the exhaust. On a track day, add half-a-litre of extra oil or you’ll ruin the engine and PMW are supplying special sump baffles to prevent this. A failed electric fan will be due to the fan switch on the thermostat housing or the ballast resistor in the fan.

Transmission

There aren’t any real dramas here as the M3’s Getrag gearbox was designed to handle more power and torque than the S14 can give. That’s not to say it’s bullet-proof though, and running it low on oil plus serious abuse can kill them. But it takes a lot to ruin one and the first signs are rattling at idle caused by a worn layshaft and crunching into second down from third.

The rear oil seal can leak and many cars need the gear linkage rebuilding. Cure stiff gearchanges by running synthetic gear oil and as long as you don’t murder it, a noisy gearbox can be kept going for a long time.

Brakes, Steering, Suspension

It’s all different from the regular E30, but the M3’s suspension will wear out in the same fashion. Standard dampers are Boge gas and these last a long time plus they give great ride and handling. PMW look after a great number of M3’s that are used on track days and Bilstein shocks with Eibach springs are ideal combination.

They’re a straight swap for the Boge units and when combined with some lower and stiffer springs they become razor sharp on the track but aren’t too stiff for the road. Apart from dampers, the bits to check are the rear subframe mounts, front balljoints plus the front lower wishbone rear bushes.

These parts aren’t very pricey and by doing the work yourself you could return a wayward handling M3 to factory precision for £500. Check the power steering rack for leaks and the column coupling rubber disc for wear. New racks are pricey, but reconditioned ones can be supplied and fitted for around £280 with a year’s guarantee.

The M3 robbed the E28 parts bin for brakes as a lot of it is similar. Discs and pads are cheap enough from BMW and again, many cars have been modified with uprated parts plus braided hoses. Our recommendation? If you’re into track days then a set of expensive brakes is all very well, but for most uses you really can’t beat the genuine article in a BMW box.

If the M3 you’re looking at has got ABS then the light should come on with the ignition but go out when the engine is fired up. If it doesn’t come on then it’s an MoT fail. If it comes on above 60mph there’s problem and ABS parts aren’t cheap, although it’s normally a sensor. A non-working ABS pump is generally a dead relay caused by starting a car’s dead battery with a booster charger.

Running Them

If you’ve bought a nice historied M3 with stamps in the book then why not use a BMW dealer? Despite the mystery that surrounds them, they are a simple car mechanically compared to latest models.

Bridgegate BMW in Chesterfield is the only dealer we know of to come up with specific servicing deals for the M3 and looks after a number of them. What it can’t do, though, is fit aftermarket bits like Bilstein shocks or spiky cams and that’s where your independent specialist comes in handy.

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E30 M3? Probably one of the greatest cars BMW has ever built and one for which no excuses are made. It’s also worth every penny and you only have to drive it once on a track day to see why. But you’ve got to question the values of some older BMW tackle. 507? Yep, quite a nice car but a Gullwing 300SL Merc would slaughter it and get my £120,000, thanks. It was good enough for Elvis, after all, 40 grand for an M1? Er, no. For 25 grand it would be a nice thing to own, but no matter how well it’s supposed to handle, it’s still got 316 door handles. I’d rather have a dark metallic blue Ferrari 512 Boxer with 12 cylinders and six barking Webers – plus the small matter of 180mph.

Even after all these years though, the E30 M3 is still regarded as the car to have, and when three mates from Potter’s Bar all have one each we just had to take a look. We wanted to know how much, how fast and what nightmares come hand-in-hand with owning one. Prepared to be surprised.

It all started back in 1994 when Tony Grech bought his. Tony runs a tyre shop called Just Tyres and it’s fair to say he’s owned quite a few tasty cars. Tony bought this in 1994 as a nice, low mileage 1990 Evo Sport 2.5 in black with the usual bits, the wraparound seats being the most obvious. “They were too obvious,” Tony says. “Not long after I bought it, some scum tried to nick it. The locks were ruined and they stole the front seats plus a few other bits. It took BMW six weeks to get hold of new ones,” he adds. “When I bought it, it’d only done 70,000km and it was mint. I used to drive it quite hard as it was supposed to be, but these days I don’t” Tony says. Even now it’s only done 139,000 km (about 86,000 miles) and sounds as good as ever. Like most M3s, it’s got the distinctive and rather gravelly timing chain rattle on start-up, which can often be heard at idle too if the engine’s good and hot. Many specialists will put the fear of God into you and tell you that the chain will snap at 100,001miles, but this isn’t so, as you’ll see from our feature on page 67.

As it came from BMW, Tony’s Sport had air condition plus cruise control. Some would say the M3 needed an extra 200cc engine capacity to lug all these costly and heavy extras about and the M3s with aircon were given slightly uprated front springs to cope. Tony also replaced the original cross-spoke alloys with 850CSi wheels shod with 215/40 ZR 17 Continental ContiSport Contact rubber. Rear end breakaway? Not likely.

Running costs have been low over the last eight years. Apart from regular servicing, which isn’t expensive anyway, the car has only needed a rear exhaust box and basic stuff like brake pads. Like many owners, Tony finds that standard BMW discs and pads are good enough.

The 2.5 was all very well, but it’s reckoned that the 2.3 was a sweeter engine – cheaper too, as these are far more of them. Paul Travors is a technician at BMW dealer Specialist Cars and has been for six years. His M3 is a 1989 Evolution II Cecotto in Macau Blue and as you can see from the pics, it’s a stunner. Macau Blue was always one of the best M3 colours, especially combined with a nice set of rims. When it comes to M3 aftermarket alloys, your choices are Alpina, Schnitzer, Hartge or BBS. Nothing else is permitted – sorry. Just like you wouldn’t bolt a set of chrome Weller eight-spokes onto an E-Type Jag, modern alloys just don’t’ look right on an M3.

Paul admits that his car is almost entirely somebody else’s work and he bought it just the way it is. The previous guy replaced the original rims with 8X17 inch Type 1 AC Schnitzer alloys, shod with Marangoni Zeta 235/40 ZR 17 rubber, and the original Boge suspension was replaced with a full Koni kit – the adjustable gas dampers, lowered uprated coils and an alloy strut brace. Externally, it’s been enhanced by a gille eyebrow plus the blacked-out centre grille. I’m usually against altering the appearance of these cars, but I have to admit that it does look good and at least you can revert to standard in less than 10 minutes.

“I’ve had this car for about three years. I was really looking for Macau Blue,” says Paul. “This one was advertised for £9500 and it was fully-specced with grey heated leather, including the centre console and grey dash, a Momo Champion steering wheel, Scorpion exhaust from the manifold back plus a Pionner sound system with custom door builds,” he adds. The only problem was a noisy gearbox after 171,000km (106,000miles), but this was rebuilt with new bearings. All Paul did apart from servicing was to replace the German check panel built into the roof with a British one. It’s the same unit but it’s all written in English and you can find one in any high spec E28 or E30 in a breaker’s yard – hardly a rare item then.

Other nice extras include AC Schnitzer pedals and gearknob, but that grey dash looks weird. Totally original and not colour-changed. It looks like it might have been a dash made for US market E30s, but fitted to this car to match the special order grey leather. I like it and it makes a nice change from the usual coal mine black E30 interior.

Like Tony’s car, Paul’s hasn’t been expensive to run. In fact, it hasn’t really needed anything and as well as chipping the owner down to £8750, his insurance is only £900 a year, fully comp, which isn’t pricey for a 24 year old. If he wasn’t a mechanic, it would be even less. Like most M3 owners, though, Paul isn’t enamoured with the timing chain noise. But he was surprised to hear about the E46 mod – quite simply, you remove the somewhat marginal standard tensioner piston and replace it with and E46 M3 item which offers an instant improvement.

Now for the M3 Convertible, an oddball car if ever there was one. Neil McDonald’s Sterling Silver version is a minter, having covered just 90,000km from new – a mere 55,000miles. With BMW as the first owner in the German logbook, Neil flew to Stuttgart to buy the car and drove it home. It has electric heated grey leather and an M Tech II steering wheel and is a nicely specced car which will soon be for sale – about £12,500 should do the trick, although there isn’t a hard top with it.

Too many E30 Convertibles have become rattly old sheds these days, but one like this isn’t. Even so, the E30 M3 Cabrio is an enigma. One view is that it combines fresh air motoring with E30 M3 road manners, the other view is that without a roof it’s not as stiff as the hardtop and hardly a road racer. Either way, it’s a nice thing to own and very rare. “I’m selling it because my girlfriend doesn’t like riding in it on the wrong side. I’ve replaced it with a Mercedes Pagoda roof SL,” Neil says.

So, three E30 M3s, but not three financial millstones. Buy right and spend the money on servicing and upkeep, and it could be that an M3 is a very cheap car to own, as you’ll nearly always get the money back come resale time. The 2.5 might be the ultimate, btu a good 2.3 isn’t far behind and is a lot cheaper – the 2.5 isn’t £3000 faster, that’s for sure.

EXPERT GUIDE

So now you want to go M Power shopping but you don’t know your 850CSi from your M5? Here’s what you’re looking for.

It’s easy deciding to move up from 320i to M5 but it’s not so easy buying one without bankrupting yourself. As serious performance cars go, BMW’s M Power models are robust as they come, but they can still turn around and bit you in the wallet if you buy the wrong one. We’ve poked and prodded enough of these cars over the years to know where the bill come from, so together with advice from the UK’s BMW specialists, here’s a guide to avoiding disaster.

You’ll see we’ve ignore the car that started it all, but if you’re in the market for a £70,000 M1 then you probably don’t need our help to choose one – just ask your butler to get his hands dirty for you.

North American readers will also note the absence of the M6, but they rust and leak in all the same places as the European M635CSi as the end of the day. We’ve also avoided getting bogged down in special editions: after all, an M3 is an M3 regardless of whether it has a steel roof or Roberto Ravaglia’s signature on a dashboard plaque. One of the key factors that might put you off an M-Series is the potential cost of putting things right, or even just plain servicing. Now, BMW isn’t in the habit of turning out marginal tat but it has made the odd mistake in the past. What we’re going to explore is the truth behind servicing your Motorsport BMW. Some of it might well surprise you.

The Big Timing Chain Debate

Many specialists will tell you that you must, at all costs, replace your timing chain and tensioners at 100,000miles – or else. Stories abound of horribly mutilated engines where chains have snapped and valves and pistons have met terrible ends. But is this down to unscrupulous preying on your fear in order to extract a couple of grand?

The first Motorsport engine was the M1’s M88 and this was made until 1984, and although it looked like a productionised version of the M1’s motor, there was a significant change within – the reversion from a double-row (duplex) to a single-row (simplex) timing chain.

This change was sweeping across the whole BMW engine range and while it didn’t really matter on a roadgoing 528i that would rarely rev beyond 5500, it did matter on the M88, whose red line was in the 7000s. Up to 80,000 miles, the chain and its tensioners were OK, but at that mileage it would be eating into the lower gearwheel until the tensioner ran out of travel. The chain would then be running slack, both at idle (causing a chatter) and at high rpm. Given this kind of abuse the chain would eventually break. So, at this kind of mileage you really need to fit a new one and it’s also important to look at it’s sprockets too, particularly the lower one on the crank.

The fibre tensioner can suffer too, with a large groove cut into it by the chain. If the engine had been well-maintained with 6000 mile oil changes and driven with respect, you might be lucky and get away with just a chain, which on its own isn’t expensive. Very late-model M6s and certain catalyst-equipped E28 M5s went to eh double-row chain, which is far better.

The single-row chain problem also applies to the E28 M5, which has exactly the same unit. Reckon on £1500 to replace everything.

Now for the E30 M3. One of the main upgrades on this unit was the reversion to a duplex chain. This immediately makes the whole set-up twice as strong and much less prone to wear. We’d go so far as to say that if the engine has been well-maintained and driven with care from cold, you won’t need the impending doom chain change at 100,000 miles.

Specialists like Hartlake, Nigel Moseley at Moseley Motorsport and Pete Walsh at PMW told us they have never known an M3 chain break and Moseley has probably seen more E30 M3s than anybody else in Britain. It is important to get it looked at, though. Also, the cam sprockets wear much faster than the crank sprocket – being at the top of the engine gives it slightly less lubrication. Any significant wear on the cam sprockets and you’ll need to get it done. If the teeth are still good and the engine is quiet, forget it. Fir an E46 M3 tensioner piston and get on with enjoying the car.

Some specialists will show you worn-out cam sprockets and say it could happen to you unless you spend £2000 now, but it’s really just a case of looking first. M3 timing chains don’t just snap. First, the engine has to be a knackered, thrashed nail, with enough timing chain noise to wake the dead. A noisy chain on an E30 can be cured cheaply by fitting the chain tensioner plunger from the latest E46 M3, which bleeds quickly and can silence a noisy chain.

It won’t silence a tired chain and worn sprockets, though. Should your car need any chain work, the head doesn’t have to come off and the engine needn’t come out. If the compressions are still good and the car doesn’t burn oil, you can leave the head on.

Finally, the M3 E36 and the 3.6 and 3.8 M5s. These all use twin-row chains and no, there’ s no suggestion that they need any chain replacement. Even so, you must investigate a noisy chain and if you do have to take the head off, fit a new chain anyway. The Vanos variable cam timing unit on the E36 M3 can get growly and that will cost a grand to replace – the unit alone is £700.

Servicing

When it comes to regular servicing, a Motorsport BMW is like any other. It’s no harder to replace the plugs or change the oil so don’t be fooled by that sharp intake of breath. Bridgegate BMW in Chesterfield was the first BMW main dealer in Britain to put M cars on the Four Plus servicing scheme, which means that even big services don’t cost that much. As a result they’ve had owners travelling from all over the country to get a service and a BMW stamp in their service book, so expect other dealers to follow suit.

At the end of the day, an older M-Series like the E30 M3 or M635CSi is a simple car by today’s standards and new Compact is more difficult to work on. The only thing a BMW dealer can’t do is fit non-genuine parts, so don’t go strolling in with your Koni suspension kit under your arm. There’s one area where an independent would get one over a dealer, though. “An Inspection I from us includes a valve clearance check. Not all dealers do this as it’s not on the job sheet,” Phil Crouch from Hartlake says.

Parts

When it comes to parts, in most cases you’ll either be using BMW originals, high spec equivalents or having your head examined. There are no cheap aftermarket engine bits anyway, but when it comes to brakes the original parts work well and aren’t expensive. E30 M3s use the same pads as an old E28 518, but don’t be tempted by cheap pads. Having said that, aftermarket ones with a known name such as Ate, Girling and Ferodo are fine, but BMW stuff is good.

Exhausts are another area of debate. There aren’t any cheap pattern exhausts and if you’re fitting an aftermarket pipe then stick to a quality brand. Think about the noise aspect too, especially with the E30 – many M3 owners have fitted a big bore system and taken it off after 100miles, fed up with the noise after about 20minutes.

Dampers were made by Bilstein for cars like M635CSi and M5, but the E30 M3 uses Boge gas dampers, which aren’t overly stiff but give a nice ride quality. Aftermarket companies do dampers for the M3 and the Koni damper/Eibach spring combination is known to work well without destroying the ride. More and more M3 owners are going back to the original equipment, though.

Bilsteins for the other cars can be bought through alternative sources, but you’ll save about 10 pence if anything. Bilstein does restrict the sale of BMW equipment dampers and at least with BMW you can get them next day for the more popular applications.

Repairs

We hope you don’t need them, but nothing lasts forever. Of the bunch, the 3.8 M5 is the most expensive to repair. Should you need an engine after a track day disaster, a second-hand one at least £2500, but they do seem to last forever. Expect about £1500 for a known E30 M3 motor with history and provenance. The electronic dampers on the M5 3.8 aren’t very funny to replace, though.

If you buy a good E30 M3 with a proper history, it should be cheap to run. A new clutch costs less than £450 for example, but when you’re having a job like this done it’s wise to replace other bits – gearbox mountings, a propshaft coupling and a gear linkage bush or two will only cost £100.

Bodywork is as good on the M-Series cars as it was on any. The M5 panels are inexpensive and even M3 panels aren’t horrendous. With parts like bootlids and still extensions, though, you might be better off with good used. The exception is the M635CSi. The early Karmann-built 6-Series gained a reputation as a rust bucket and although the later cars, including the M version, were better, they still like to rust.

The front wings are the regular casualty and they cost a fortune new. The ludicrous £450 each is condemning a number of otherwise economically savable cars.

Second-hand wings are rare and the only alternative is having them removed, sand-blasted and rebuilt with new metal. M3s seem to rust around the bottom of the screen which is bonded in. Bridgegate’s bodyshop has repaired these and it’s not easy.

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