BMW M3 Sedan –The Next Best Ultimate Driving Machine to the M3
The new M3 is one car that you dream about, and wish that you had. At the retail price of RM732k, it is out of the reach of most of us, but there must be a lucky few who do have this kind of money as small change; they are the ones who will be able to drive the M3 around while the rest of us drool over it.
Me? I can’t afford one either, but when BMW Malaysia offered me one unit for a test, I of course jumped at the chance, and here I am, sharing my impressions with our readers; I wish that all of you could have driven it, but then, that is not to be. (sigh). It was the M3 Sedan, not the M3, but who cares? After all, the M3 Sedan is basically all the mechanicals of an M3 put into a 4-door sedan body.
One thing I always liked about BMW is the way they mix and match engines with their various bodies. For a long while now, the small-bodied 3 Series has had variants with engines starting from a humble 1.6 litres to 1.8 litres, through to 2.0 litres and all the way up to 2.5 and 2.8 litres. To me, the rationale was quite simple; put a bigger engine into a small car to get more power and performance. Just so that you don’t go out right now to put a 7-Series engine into your 3, there are safety considerations like brakes, handling, and weight distribution to be taken into account; this is a job left to the professional car designers and engineers.
The M3 Sedan is aimed at those enthusiasts who want a very high performance car, yet need it as a daily driver; the four door configuration allows friends and family to come along for the ride minus the inconvenience of just having two doors. Apart from the fact that it has two extra doors, the M3 Sedan sits slightly higher, and being just a mite heavier, it is also marginally slower than the 2-door M3, but only marginally so.
The new M3, the Sedan version included, breaks the tradition of having a straight six engine, and after 17 years of history, break new ground by putting in a 4.0 litre V8 engine. How they managed to squeeze it into the front end is a miracle in itself, but how they maintain the balance of the car is a case study in the use of new materials such as composite materials and aluminium alloys that not only keep the front end weight decent, but enhance performance as well, without compromising on safety. If you ever get the chance to get up close and personal with one, you will be able to go on a journey of discovery to check out the front fender and front bonnet parts. If your body is still supple enough to bend down and look into the innards of the car, you will see the aluminium alloys used in the suspension and the engine parts too.
The old adage that ‘Nothing beats cubic capacity’ still applies, because with 420 horsepower and 400 Nm of torque, there are very few cars on the road that can match the M3. Zero to 100 km/h is done in 4.9 seconds, and if the speed was not electronically limited to 250 km/h, the M3 Sedan would go well beyond. Anywhere in between, the M3 will out-accelerate almost anything on the road, and some on the race track too.
The wonderful thing is, you can actually let your grandmother take your M3 sedan to market if you could bear to let it out of your sight, because it comes with a 7-speed dual clutch automatic gearbox, and can be driven smoothly even in start-stop traffic. Of course you would have to set the mode for ‘N’, which is for normal driving, wherein the gear changes are smoother, and the suspension settings are softer for comfort. In instances when you sprout horns out the side of your head, you would want it in sport or Sport Plus, which tightens up the gear changes and makes the clutch more ‘grabby’ and hardens the suspension settings.
We had the car for three days, a period I consider too short for such a car; most of the time I didn’t get a chance to even see it, because every one in my test team was clamouring to drive it. Still, I managed to get some decent time in it by pulling rank, and if I had to describe it in one word, that one word would be. Simply, “AWESOME!!!” triple exclamation marks included.
The V8 is so smooth – with the acoustics that the BMW designers have built into the exhaust system, and an engine that pulls up to a screaming 8,400 revolutions, even with the glass all wound up, it is music to the ears of a petrol-head. If you happen to be on the outside, and a M3 whizzes by in high rpm, you will hear it before you see it, and you will lose sight of it before you stop hearing it. I suspect the 7-speed box comes from the M5, with a few adaptations. There is launch control, and this is fun, although we are warned not to do more than one launch at a time, as this is quite strenuous on the gearbox.
The driver gets to set his or her own personalized settings for the suspension and engine response, and save them to be recalled at any time through the touch of a button, or use the default settings under the Normal, Sports of Sports Plus modes. In the normal mode, everything is kept decent, and this mode is best for driving around town. Put it into sports mode or sports plus, and the M3 becomes a muscle car ready for the race track.
Handling is beyond reproach, and the M3 will take just about anything you might throw at it, and if you over-cook it, the full array of safety devices such as the ABS and the DSTC will come in to help you out. Brakes are enormous, 360mm cross-drilled discs in the front, backed up by 350mm discs at the rear. Shod on 18inch wheels, the M3 is a real performance machine.
I have talked so much about the M3, and haven’t even said a word on its looks, or the interior. I think I will leave it to you; should you be interested in a real driver’s car, and have the money to spare; you should go check it out for yourself. Personally, although the interior is very sporty-looking, and befits the model, I really don’t care that much, because the performance really is what the M3 Sedan is all about.
