Looking at the E46 M3's facts on paper you might be wondering what's the difference between a SMG model and a manual gearbox one. Well, this time we get to see it, in a real life test, thanks to the guys from M5Board.com.
They had the chance to film a drag race between the two models and things got interesting. The sequential manual gearbox (or SMG) is an electrohydraulic manual transmission system that changes gears depending on the selected mode and power requirements.
The differences between the automatic SMG and manual transmission are almost unnoticeable as you can see in the video below. The camera car is fitted with the automatic transmission, whilst the silver M3 has a manual gearbox.
As you can notice, there is virtually no difference between the two. Of course, this is possible due to the perfect shifts of the driver in the silver M3. The only difference you'll be able to notice between the two can be noticed around busy city streets where the SMG will definitely be more comfortable.
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