Just look at it. All blistered fenders and wings, sculpted side skirts and menacing black grilles. The regular E30 3-series is easily the best of the series, and this is without a doubt the very best of the M-division's offerings to date. Yes, it "only" has a four-cylinder engine with 192hp, but in a car that weighed under 3000 pounds with rear wheel drive and a very stiff and willing chassis, this puppy was a race-car for the streets.
BMW set about stiffening the body shell and applying all of it's handling prowess into an absolute scalpel of a car. They also improved the brakes, and those wider wheel arches accommodate wider tires. While later variations of the M3 were more powerful and faster in a straight line, this is the most direct and precise of the line. And this one still looks cool, like a road-bound rally car.
One of my favorite qualities of this car is it's relative affordability. Yes, they are fairly rare (only about 5000 were brought to the US from 1986-1992), somewhat exotic looking, and have genuine racing heritage. But because they look similar to a standard 3-series, are slow by modern quick car standards (0-60 in just under 7 seconds), they have not caught the eye of the Corvette/Ferrari/Muscle Car crowd of collectors. Yet. The biggest problem is finding one that hasn't been wrecked, abused, or modified, as the price dipped into the high-school kid range for a brief period.
Still, it seems like it would be worth the wait and the small outlay to own a truly legendary car, and I can't wait until I have a bigger garage to put one in.
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