The Car That Got Away: My Experience with the BMW M3

As I sit here reflecting on my experience with the BMW M3, I am still amazed by its performance and handling. It's been a year since I got behind the wheel of this beast, and I must say that it has exceeded all of my expectations. The car is incredibly fast, but not just because of its powerful engine. It's also incredibly predictable, which makes it perfect for track days.

One of the things that I love most about the M3 is its carbon-ceramic brakes. These brakes are a game-changer, and I can attest to their exceptional performance. They never let me down, even after 25,000 kilometers of driving, which was quite an accomplishment for normal brakes. In fact, I was surprised to find that my car still had so much life left in it when I finally got around to replacing the brake pads.

Of course, no discussion of the M3 would be complete without mentioning its engine. The car's 3.0-liter inline-6 is a beast, producing over 400 horsepower and 450 lb-ft of torque. It's incredible to think about how much power this engine puts down through the carbon-ceramic brakes, making this car one of the most fun-to-drive vehicles I've ever had the pleasure of driving.

But what really sets the M3 apart from other cars is its handling. The car's carbon-fiber chassis and adaptive damping system make it incredibly agile and responsive, even at high speeds. And let me tell you, this car can go very fast indeed - so much so that I've found myself struggling to keep up with my own driving skills.

I also have the pleasure of owning a BMW F12, which is one of the most beautiful cars in the world. But when it comes down to it, I still love my M3 more than anything else in my garage. There's just something about the car that gets me going, and I find myself driving it every chance I get.

One of the things that I've noticed about the M3 is how well it holds up over time. After 25,000 kilometers of driving, the car still feels like new - a testament to its exceptional build quality and attention to detail. And let's be honest, when you're driving a car as fun as this one, you tend to put a lot of miles on it.

Speaking of track days, I had the pleasure of taking my M3 out for a spin at a local racing circuit. The experience was exhilarating, with the car responding eagerly to every turn and input. But what really impressed me was how predictable the car was - even when pushing it to its limits, it never once surprised me.

Of course, no discussion of the M3 would be complete without mentioning its track-focused features. I've added a few upgrades to my car over time, including an adapter for the M3's manual transmission and a set of lightweight wheels. These additions have made the car even more agile and responsive, and I can attest to their performance.

But what really gets me excited is when people recognize me on the street because of my car - it's like they know that I'm driving something special. And let's be honest, there's no denying the fact that this car is special. Whether you're cruising down the highway or carving up a mountain road, the M3 is an absolute blast to drive.

I've also taken my M3 out for a spin at the Autobahn, where it really came alive. The car's exceptional acceleration and handling made it a joy to drive on this famous stretch of German highway - although I must admit that the experience was slightly tempered by a unexpected problem with the drivetrain.

One day, while driving at high speed on the track, I hit a curb quite hard on the exit of a corner. The car's drivetrain completely gave out, leaving me stranded on the track. It was a bit of a shock, to be honest - although I did manage to get back up and running after a few minutes.

In any case, that experience only served to reinforce my love for this car. Despite its occasional quirks, the M3 remains one of the best cars in the world - and I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to drive it.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this POV review by AEL my name is Martin and today I am taking a look at my own M3 after one year of ownership so I'm going to talk to you about the MTS I've done the experiences I've had and just a summary of one year of ownership and 25,000 kmet of driving and I'm going to do that while walking around the car having a little test drive here on these lovely B- roads and of course the alobon so let's start at the front now as you know I have a BMW individual colar Zanzibar 2 now this color is so polarizing some people hate it some people love it and there's like nothing in between and I absolutely like that so I've even had it at the BMW d ship in the workshop I was sitting next to the car at story venberg BMW dealership and I think the guy didn't know I was the owner of the car but he said one of their mechanics Jesus Christ that car is so ugly with that color and I just couldn't stop laughing and I don't blame him I mean it's such a personal opinion these like very out there colors and the other guy said no no no I absolutely absolutely love it and you know I'm one of those guys I just love a weird spec and I absolutely love a unique spec so that's why my car looks like this you do see that it has done 25,000 very fast kilometers because um Stone chips yikes it's really quite bad as you can see a lot a lot of stone chips so this car has the M driver pack which means it can do 290 I think and I very frequently do that on the autoban as you can see with other cars and stone chips come from the back tires of the car I'm chasing and it then looks like this but I don't care because that's how I drive it that's how I use it should have gone with ppf for the front a lot of people told me and they were right so on the outside I still haven't done any mods whatsoever I have the competition Wheels I have the ceramic brakes with the golden caliper uh well one mod I have done 1,000 km ago I had to replace my Pell P Zeros and I now have the Michelin Pilot Sport fors tires now I lost the tire lottery so I got the pelli tires instead of the Michelin when I got the car but they were are actually really really good because there is not much difference in between these tires and normally I really don't like the P zos but on the M3 they really weren't all that bad nearly as good as these so that's a a great job by pelli I guess BMW told them to really step up their game with the P0 for the M3 I don't know why but it really suits the car well so we have Chrome badges because this is a manual I don't have the carbon exerior package so everything is black instead of carbon which I actually like this being a more classic approach I have the FI exhaust which has been wonderful such an amazing sound I also have the 200 cell down pipes and again M3 in Chrome badge right there and a black boot lip spoiler just awesome so let's have a look under the Bonnet now this is where I did some things so let's start with the armor Speed Carbon Fiber air intake it makes a wonderful wonderful noise and under the Bonnet it's carbon fiber Galore now these like cover plates are optional so you can also remove these and then you have like an open air filter system and you can see the air filter sitting right here and there is another carbon fiber pipe with the armor speed badge on there but you cannot see it because I've also installed this this is my latest mod which is a swor carbon strut brace so it looks like with the f82 f80 the factory one because normally this is all steel so this is much lighter um and it's been engineered to offer the same like structural strength as the steel but it's much much lighter and well obviously it looks a lot better and because I like it so much I thought of adding it to our web shop and even have them on stock so if you want one of these go click the link in the description and you will have it within a few days I'll make sure of that now what I also have is the race chip GTS black so the most powerful one we now have somewhere around 630 horsepower if you haven't seen that video on the dyno click in the top right corner it's a really cool installation and testing video where I do a lot of stock versus race chip GTS black uh testing in Winter I just completely turned it off and I had the factory 480 horsepower which was really really nice because with more power and well more torque uh it can be quite treacherous with these tires in winter with this kind of power yeah it's really really a great benefit that you can turn it off now the carbon fiber brakes carbon Ceramics have been really really wonderful I didn't have to do anything with it so that's been great oh talking about Stone chips the windshield is quite sensitive for stone chips so you will not believe it but this is my third windshield in one year yes third so uh I'm hoping it was an unlucky year windshield wise otherwise ah it's going to be expensive for the years to come so new mold yes sir I have a carbon fiber steering wheel the guys from r44 performance came by and they brought their carbon fiber steering wheel with uh kyami orange 12:00 marker so that's the color from my interior and wow what a great addition to the interior so the exterior doesn't have any carbon fiber except for the roof that comes as standard on the interior however I do have the carbon interior trim so I thought of adding another big piece of carbon fiber and it's it's just lovely flat bottom and it's such a nice steering wheel to hold it's a bit different than the stock one but I really really like it and I have blue stitching as with my interior so that's really really nice another mod I've done is the gear shifter which is the m performance gear shifter of an 92 M3 but you know it sits here beautifully it's very easy to install and yeah just a great M because the stock one I have it right here I guess in my garbage bin here it is it's this like weird X shaped BMW shifter the one they use the one they've been using for like 40 years now and it's just a lot less nicer to hold and it's a bit taller so yeah I really really like this you can also get it with carbon fiber but I chose to have this alcantar one because it's also a lot cheaper they're not too expensive I think I paid like €60 for this so a great and cheap mold which really changes the and improves the feel of the gear shifter so let's start it up and as you can see I've done 25,35 kilm let's go for M mode and set up and let's take it for a drive so this this has been my daily and it has been wonderful it's such a nice car to drive on a daily basis and with that crazy sound from the 200 cell down pipes and full exhaust from fi it's always always a blaster drive and this is with the valves closed because with the valves open it's kind of over the top which is also kind of cool because uh you have this like raspby E46 sound with the valves closed it's a bit of an E46 f80 marriage that's how I see it but if you open them going into M2 mode Jesus you also get these burbles and bangs and it sounds a bit over the top but it's kind of cool that you have those options because with the push of a button you can also close it again and you don't have those again overthe top burbles a lot of people ask me why have you gone for the manual don't you regret not getting the auto the answer is still no I absolutely love the manual I have driven like 20 M3s m4s right now and with the auto I get bored at some point it's just too fast for me it's you put it into D and you just give it some throttle and the car is just way too fast for daily driving in my opinion this though I can short shift I can leave into a high gear I then go off the throttle I hear the armor speed intake making all these wonderful noises and who what a car man after 25,000 km it still gets me and I've been thinking about switching cars which I do a lot both the switching and the thinking about it but never do I come to the point that I actually do it that's how much I love this car I think it's it's one of the no it's not one of the it's the best car we've ever had without question oh what a sound so I've also done a track day with the car and it was so nice because it's so predictable and these carbon Ceramics they don't give up they always have the same performance lap after lap after lap and again I go to the autun I just leave and step on these on these brakes and they never let down it's the best thing about this car one of the best things you really should get these because after 25,000 km of driving like me I would have gone through like two or three sets of normal brakes and I really noticed that people think that this car is really special they now know that this bronze m three that's out the top of now wherever I go I get recognized because of the car and even when we take the F12 and this people tend to go towards this car because they think it's more special and I actually agree because we were at day one world of cars which tens of thousands of people attended and we were with the F12 in this I was the only G8 in this color of course it's still the only one in the world as far as I know but the F12 though there were like four red F12 so yeah that that's just what this car is about this spec this spec is just a 10 for me it still is it was quite expensive as you know like €5,000 to get this color um but I never never regret it okay so let's turn on the race chip which has been a dream because it always works I never get any fold codes or stupid you know um glitches and stuff like that let's go into race mode and it's just been a lovely and very easy way to tune this car because the ECU is still locked if you want to tune this car you have to send your ECU to Russia and they then tune it and you get the ECU back so it's quite a time consuming process which is not for me because I don't like sending my ECU to Russia which you know I know a lot of people won't mind it but I do oh just the added torque is immense man it's such a strong engine this the potential even with just a race chip what you get in return is unbelievable so I also have the adaptive chassis and on the autoban it's always nicer to have a bit of a softer setup so that's why I'm switching to sport mode oh man it's fast so I did have this weird thing I went on the track yesterday uh Moto GP track in aen and I hit a curb quite hard on the exit of a corner and the car just completely died on me it's a drivetrain is completely broken something like that drivetrain uh unavailable and I had to stop on the track I had no option other than that so that was really really weird this being an M3 and it should have been for the track you know um that was quite weird I don't know why it did that I never had that and I just had to restart it and it worked again and I did another few laps and it didn't come back that was a bit of a weird experience for me now as you might know the manual version is 30 kilos lighter than the competition and I can really tell when I drive both cars this feels a little easier to turn in and a little just lighter to conclude after 1 year and 25,000 km I still love this car to bits and all the mods I have done are just perfect I've gone through one set of tires which cost me like ,000 maybe a little more uh I had one service done which was just oil and interior filters it wasn't too expensive so up until now this car has been amazing amazing and I have the racetrack pack back which means I got the carbon brakes and these carbon fiber seats um and these seats are really what makes the car the seats are absolutely perfect these are the best seats available in any car today so thank you for watching hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you at the next one bye guys what a lovely e63swhat's up ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this POV review by AEL my name is Martin and today I am taking a look at my own M3 after one year of ownership so I'm going to talk to you about the MTS I've done the experiences I've had and just a summary of one year of ownership and 25,000 kmet of driving and I'm going to do that while walking around the car having a little test drive here on these lovely B- roads and of course the alobon so let's start at the front now as you know I have a BMW individual colar Zanzibar 2 now this color is so polarizing some people hate it some people love it and there's like nothing in between and I absolutely like that so I've even had it at the BMW d ship in the workshop I was sitting next to the car at story venberg BMW dealership and I think the guy didn't know I was the owner of the car but he said one of their mechanics Jesus Christ that car is so ugly with that color and I just couldn't stop laughing and I don't blame him I mean it's such a personal opinion these like very out there colors and the other guy said no no no I absolutely absolutely love it and you know I'm one of those guys I just love a weird spec and I absolutely love a unique spec so that's why my car looks like this you do see that it has done 25,000 very fast kilometers because um Stone chips yikes it's really quite bad as you can see a lot a lot of stone chips so this car has the M driver pack which means it can do 290 I think and I very frequently do that on the autoban as you can see with other cars and stone chips come from the back tires of the car I'm chasing and it then looks like this but I don't care because that's how I drive it that's how I use it should have gone with ppf for the front a lot of people told me and they were right so on the outside I still haven't done any mods whatsoever I have the competition Wheels I have the ceramic brakes with the golden caliper uh well one mod I have done 1,000 km ago I had to replace my Pell P Zeros and I now have the Michelin Pilot Sport fors tires now I lost the tire lottery so I got the pelli tires instead of the Michelin when I got the car but they were are actually really really good because there is not much difference in between these tires and normally I really don't like the P zos but on the M3 they really weren't all that bad nearly as good as these so that's a a great job by pelli I guess BMW told them to really step up their game with the P0 for the M3 I don't know why but it really suits the car well so we have Chrome badges because this is a manual I don't have the carbon exerior package so everything is black instead of carbon which I actually like this being a more classic approach I have the FI exhaust which has been wonderful such an amazing sound I also have the 200 cell down pipes and again M3 in Chrome badge right there and a black boot lip spoiler just awesome so let's have a look under the Bonnet now this is where I did some things so let's start with the armor Speed Carbon Fiber air intake it makes a wonderful wonderful noise and under the Bonnet it's carbon fiber Galore now these like cover plates are optional so you can also remove these and then you have like an open air filter system and you can see the air filter sitting right here and there is another carbon fiber pipe with the armor speed badge on there but you cannot see it because I've also installed this this is my latest mod which is a swor carbon strut brace so it looks like with the f82 f80 the factory one because normally this is all steel so this is much lighter um and it's been engineered to offer the same like structural strength as the steel but it's much much lighter and well obviously it looks a lot better and because I like it so much I thought of adding it to our web shop and even have them on stock so if you want one of these go click the link in the description and you will have it within a few days I'll make sure of that now what I also have is the race chip GTS black so the most powerful one we now have somewhere around 630 horsepower if you haven't seen that video on the dyno click in the top right corner it's a really cool installation and testing video where I do a lot of stock versus race chip GTS black uh testing in Winter I just completely turned it off and I had the factory 480 horsepower which was really really nice because with more power and well more torque uh it can be quite treacherous with these tires in winter with this kind of power yeah it's really really a great benefit that you can turn it off now the carbon fiber brakes carbon Ceramics have been really really wonderful I didn't have to do anything with it so that's been great oh talking about Stone chips the windshield is quite sensitive for stone chips so you will not believe it but this is my third windshield in one year yes third so uh I'm hoping it was an unlucky year windshield wise otherwise ah it's going to be expensive for the years to come so new mold yes sir I have a carbon fiber steering wheel the guys from r44 performance came by and they brought their carbon fiber steering wheel with uh kyami orange 12:00 marker so that's the color from my interior and wow what a great addition to the interior so the exterior doesn't have any carbon fiber except for the roof that comes as standard on the interior however I do have the carbon interior trim so I thought of adding another big piece of carbon fiber and it's it's just lovely flat bottom and it's such a nice steering wheel to hold it's a bit different than the stock one but I really really like it and I have blue stitching as with my interior so that's really really nice another mod I've done is the gear shifter which is the m performance gear shifter of an 92 M3 but you know it sits here beautifully it's very easy to install and yeah just a great M because the stock one I have it right here I guess in my garbage bin here it is it's this like weird X shaped BMW shifter the one they use the one they've been using for like 40 years now and it's just a lot less nicer to hold and it's a bit taller so yeah I really really like this you can also get it with carbon fiber but I chose to have this alcantar one because it's also a lot cheaper they're not too expensive I think I paid like €60 for this so a great and cheap mold which really changes the and improves the feel of the gear shifter so let's start it up and as you can see I've done 25,35 kilm let's go for M mode and set up and let's take it for a drive so this this has been my daily and it has been wonderful it's such a nice car to drive on a daily basis and with that crazy sound from the 200 cell down pipes and full exhaust from fi it's always always a blaster drive and this is with the valves closed because with the valves open it's kind of over the top which is also kind of cool because uh you have this like raspby E46 sound with the valves closed it's a bit of an E46 f80 marriage that's how I see it but if you open them going into M2 mode Jesus you also get these burbles and bangs and it sounds a bit over the top but it's kind of cool that you have those options because with the push of a button you can also close it again and you don't have those again overthe top burbles a lot of people ask me why have you gone for the manual don't you regret not getting the auto the answer is still no I absolutely love the manual I have driven like 20 M3s m4s right now and with the auto I get bored at some point it's just too fast for me it's you put it into D and you just give it some throttle and the car is just way too fast for daily driving in my opinion this though I can short shift I can leave into a high gear I then go off the throttle I hear the armor speed intake making all these wonderful noises and who what a car man after 25,000 km it still gets me and I've been thinking about switching cars which I do a lot both the switching and the thinking about it but never do I come to the point that I actually do it that's how much I love this car I think it's it's one of the no it's not one of the it's the best car we've ever had without question oh what a sound so I've also done a track day with the car and it was so nice because it's so predictable and these carbon Ceramics they don't give up they always have the same performance lap after lap after lap and again I go to the autun I just leave and step on these on these brakes and they never let down it's the best thing about this car one of the best things you really should get these because after 25,000 km of driving like me I would have gone through like two or three sets of normal brakes and I really noticed that people think that this car is really special they now know that this bronze m three that's out the top of now wherever I go I get recognized because of the car and even when we take the F12 and this people tend to go towards this car because they think it's more special and I actually agree because we were at day one world of cars which tens of thousands of people attended and we were with the F12 in this I was the only G8 in this color of course it's still the only one in the world as far as I know but the F12 though there were like four red F12 so yeah that that's just what this car is about this spec this spec is just a 10 for me it still is it was quite expensive as you know like €5,000 to get this color um but I never never regret it okay so let's turn on the race chip which has been a dream because it always works I never get any fold codes or stupid you know um glitches and stuff like that let's go into race mode and it's just been a lovely and very easy way to tune this car because the ECU is still locked if you want to tune this car you have to send your ECU to Russia and they then tune it and you get the ECU back so it's quite a time consuming process which is not for me because I don't like sending my ECU to Russia which you know I know a lot of people won't mind it but I do oh just the added torque is immense man it's such a strong engine this the potential even with just a race chip what you get in return is unbelievable so I also have the adaptive chassis and on the autoban it's always nicer to have a bit of a softer setup so that's why I'm switching to sport mode oh man it's fast so I did have this weird thing I went on the track yesterday uh Moto GP track in aen and I hit a curb quite hard on the exit of a corner and the car just completely died on me it's a drivetrain is completely broken something like that drivetrain uh unavailable and I had to stop on the track I had no option other than that so that was really really weird this being an M3 and it should have been for the track you know um that was quite weird I don't know why it did that I never had that and I just had to restart it and it worked again and I did another few laps and it didn't come back that was a bit of a weird experience for me now as you might know the manual version is 30 kilos lighter than the competition and I can really tell when I drive both cars this feels a little easier to turn in and a little just lighter to conclude after 1 year and 25,000 km I still love this car to bits and all the mods I have done are just perfect I've gone through one set of tires which cost me like ,000 maybe a little more uh I had one service done which was just oil and interior filters it wasn't too expensive so up until now this car has been amazing amazing and I have the racetrack pack back which means I got the carbon brakes and these carbon fiber seats um and these seats are really what makes the car the seats are absolutely perfect these are the best seats available in any car today so thank you for watching hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you at the next one bye guys what a lovely e63s\n"