Remember when the E30 generation of the BMW 3 Series was dirt cheap, and the M3 variant quite affordable? Well, those days are long gone, as you will have to fork out a small fortune for the range-topping variant of the original 3er.
Those who were lucky enough to have bought one while it was still on the affordable side have developed a strong relationship with it. Car collectors are mostly keeping theirs away from the road, and at the opposite end of the spectrum are those who still put their classic M3s through their paces every now and then.
Not only that, but some of them have swapped the original firepower, which was either a 2.3- or a 2.5-liter engine, with not that much grunt compared to today’s fast vehicles, with something way punchier. The best recipe without losing the BMW M DNA is to get your hands on the naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V10 mill, stuffed under the hoods of the E60 and E61 M5s, and E63 and E64 M6s, and equip it to your E30 M3.
It appears that that’s what the owner of this particular example did, according to the video that lies one mouse-click away, presumably lifting the output from the original 500 hp to 540 hp. That might not seem like much, but when you factor in the weight of the vehicle, you get a true missile on wheels, one that can give modern supercars a run for their money.
Bear with us a little longer, while we tell you which cars took on this bad E30 on one particular day. That would be a Lamborghini Huracan, a Jaguar F-Type, and a Chevrolet Corvette. You know where this is going, don’t you? Well, how about erasing all doubts from your mind by watching the vid.
After a series of unfortunate events put an end to Cristian's dream of entering a custom built & tuned old-school Dacia into a rally competition, he moved on to drive press cars and write for a living. He's worked for several automotive online journals and now he's back at autoevolution after his first tour in the mid-2000s. Full profile
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