Project BMW 318is: Running Against an M3

Any plans to get closer to the M3 track times or are you completely content with the end product? 

Tim Suddard said:

Assisting him was one of our editors as well as M3 owner Marc Schatell—a reader and talented driver in his own right.

Hi Marc!  - Travis

I've been a long time grm reader. Having not read an issue in quite some time I stumbled across your issue with "low buck" e30. Let's just say there is nothing low buck about your build. Honestly it was a waste of money and a ton of time.

Let's get down to it, first off why was the e30 m3 built? To win races, something the standard e30 could not do against its competition. If everyone is so loving of the almighty m3 then everyone should know its history and why it was created.

So you start with a $450 e30 and sink $20,000+ into it, is that low buck? I think not. An $8,500 engine rebuild? Seriously? Why not just spend $9k and get a quality car to start with, your still cheaper than the m3. Which, your "goodings" pricing is highly inflated. These cars aren't cheap these days but $60k to start is off. You can get a fine example for about half that.

So much time was wasted by you and your readers with months of these bogus articles on trying to make a rat box 318 beat the almighty m3. Your $20k ratbox is lucky if it can beat a spec e30. Which by the way can be built for less than your 318.

I wont bore you with the many other reasons you botched this article. Being an automotive fan since birth, and having read hundreds of copies of grm I expected you guys to have some sort of knowledge. Geez, was I wrong. What's next, we spend $20k on a Acura integra and put it against the type r?

Thanks for wasting mine and many other readers time. I am no longer a grm reader.

Opinionated1 
New Reader

Member since Aug 21, 2019

Forum posts

Opinionated1 has posted 1 times in the forums.

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Petty apt username, I'd say.

I suspect he is a regular poster using a new account. 

I don't agree with everything he said but some of the points are valid.  

It not low buck but it turned out nice. Lord knows I justify my expenditures to make sense, even if in my own mind. 

Opinionated1 said:

I've been a long time grm reader.

Having not read an issue in quite some time I stumbled across your issue with "low buck" e30.

Thanks for wasting mine and many other readers time. I am no longer a grm reader.

Sounds like you may not be the target audience?

Long time reader.

Haven't read an issue in quite some time.

No longer a reader again because of this one set of project articles.

While I agree some of the money spent wasn't necessarily low buck, a well prepped 318is is still a fun car. Personally when I had my 318is, a Metric Mechanic built motor would have been sweet.

captainawesome said:

Opinionated1 said:

I've been a long time grm reader.

Having not read an issue in quite some time I stumbled across your issue with "low buck" e30.

Thanks for wasting mine and many other readers time. I am no longer a grm reader.

Sounds like you may not be the target audience?

Long time reader.

Haven't read an issue in quite some time.

No longer a reader again because of this one set of project articles.

While I agree some of the money spent wasn't necessarily low buck, a well prepped 318is is still a fun car. Personally when I had my 318is, a Metric Mechanic built motor would have been sweet.

 

 

I ran M42s in multiple BMWs for the last decade (including my rally car). So I would say I'm a pretty big fan of the M42 in general.

That said, The MM engine for $8k is maybe similar power to (and less torque than) the virtually-free M50 I swapped into mine. And for all the to-do about "balanced handling from the 4-cylinder" (a line which i myself used a thousand times over the years when talking to 6-cylinder e30 friends), the reality is ....I can hardly tell the handling difference at all with the M50 (with slightly stiffer front springs).  I thought once I swapped I would probably regret it somewhat. But in truth, I don't even remotely regret it - and i'm not someone who is "chasing horsepower" in gemeral with any of my project cars (160hp porsche, lol.....)

Yeah yeah, M50, S52, M20, etc swaps are a dime a dozen in the e30 scene and wouldn't have made for a good GRM article.......... and M/M M42s are extremely rare (there's a reason for that). So I appreciate the details of the build in GRM - while at the same time rolling my eyes at the ridiculous expense to build a car that, in reality, is probably slower on the track than one with a junkyard M50. 

For half the price of the M/M M42, the truth is the real answer to "keeping the stock 4-cylinder handling" is to do and all-aluminum M54 swap that would not only be about the same weight, but also as/more powerful for less than half the cost (with better ZF transmission gearing, to boot). 

All that said, i think we all undesrtand that half the stuff in the GRM build was probably subsidized by GRM advertisers (or, at least, done to make them happy). I'm actually pretty surprised it didn't have weather-tech floormats haha....

And, I'd still rather see this build than another LS-swapped whatever......:D

In reply to irish44j :

M54 for sure, but a small boost ~10-12 psi turbo m42 would be a decent option as well.

captainawesome said:

In reply to irish44j :

M54 for sure, but a small boost ~10-12 psi turbo m42 would be a decent option as well.

yup, I actually priced it out and I could have built a reliable turbo M42 setup for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 all-in running 8-10 psi, which is about 190whp. Only reason i didn't is that for rally, adding heat and complexity (and things like vulnerable front intercooler) doesn't usually end well.

Also determined that adding all the turbo-related stuff pretty much made the M42 setup weigh almost as much as the M50 anyhow. 

I think that there's a serious missing of the point here. Sure the project was a fail from a bang-for-the-buck perspective, but it was inspirational, informative, and GRM did stuff few if any of us would have. In other words, they took a bench-racing fantasy and made it reality. That's a cool thing to do, and to me, much more interesting than the bazillionth article on Miatas. There's any number of ways to build a faster car for $20K, but so what?

Opinionated1 comes off as a petulant child, and we are better off without him.