Most car enthusiasts praise the Mazda MX-5 Miata for its fun-to-drive nature, but at the top of that list is the BMW E30. It’s a rare super fun classic sports car developed in many variations, with an almost cultic following. That said, Hoonigan, on their special Daily Tangents series, featured a BMW E30 that would cause a riot if a world full of E30 purists existed.
Not many people would mess with the mechanics of a classic E30. It wouldn’t make sense to tune a car that's rising in value each day parked in a garage. Would it? Well, not everyone’s patient enough to hold on to a vehicle for a couple of decades to make a fortune.
Hoonoigan’s featured BMW E30 owner, Zach, is one of those people. His 1991 BMW E30 318is started as a sleeper but is currently a racer making over 1,000 hp / 1,014 ps (allegedly).
Regardless of what Zach says – it still looks like a sleeper. It has a neat exterior, stock wheels, and functional back seats as well.
Under the hood, this 1991 E30 runs on a built stroker. Mods include CP-Carrillo pistons and rods, M50 manifold and a built head. They’ve also installed a nitrous juice kit (20 shots of nitrous).
Zach hasn’t put the racer E30 on a dyno yet. He’s rating his sleeper turned racer based on a duel with a 1,800 horsepower Viper (lost by a whisker) and a twin-turbo Lamborghini Huracan, which he admits the owner sold after losing to the E30.
“It’s a fast car. It feels like a bullet. It’s scary getting out of third gear going into fourth.” Zach confessed.
After all that talk, it was time to put the racer E30 on the Hoonigan Burnyard. It didn’t quite sound like a 1,000-horsepower racer when he first did a burnout, but once he got into second gear, all the demons came out to play.
Humphrey is a car enthusiast whose love and passion for automobiles extended into collecting, writing, driving, and working on cars. He got his passion for cars from his Dad, who spent thousands of hours working on his old junky 1970 E20 Toyota Corolla. Years later, he would end up doing the same with a series of lemons he’s owned throughout his adult life. Full profile
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