GOAT Episode 3: M for… E46 M3

The year is 2005. The game: Need for Speed Most Wanted. A silver car with blue decals adorns the CD cover. It would go on to be the best game Electronic Arts would bring out for the too-young-to-legally-drive petrolhead. The car on the cover? The E46 M3! And that’s us for GOAT episode 3.

E46 M3: A jaw-dropping delight

The car would have kids like me drool over its sheer might. I remember driving around the city of Rockport for hours, visualising the smooth maneuver and absolutely loving the machine.

By the time I could legally drive, the E9X M3 had replaced the E46 M3 and somehow it didn’t make my jaw drop like the silver car in the game. And so, alas, I lost interest in the Ms and BMWs.

Fast forward to the mid-2010s, a time when the BMWs of the yesteryear were becoming popular and gaining value quickly – especially the very first M3, the E30 M3! They have become, and remain, quite the investment pieces. And my interest in BMWs has been restored once again.

Changing the formula: Enter E46

After meeting quite a lot of BMW enthusiasts, I find myself behind the wheel of an E30 M3 to see what the hype was all about. It handled well for a car built in the 80s, but was a bit low on grunt. The one that followed the E30, the E36, was quite the same too.

But that was the ///M formula in the 80s and 90s – excellent handling cars that lacked quite a few ponies.

Enter Y2K and the third generation of the M3 – the E46. BMW changed the formula a bit and finally gave the M3 the power it deserved. A 338hp inline-6 that revs all the way to 8000 rpm (oh the sound!!!).

The power transformed the well-established corner-carver into a muscle car. This M, unlike its predecessors, had the ability to kill mustangs from a stop-light and totally lose them in the corners. 

All those ponies ran from the engine to the wheels through a 6-speed manual transmission or an automated manual transmission called the SMG-II (Sequential Manual Gearbox, the second). It would only take 5.1 seconds to hit 100kph from a standstill and was digitally limited to 250kph – what a beast! 

A future classic?

Special versions of this M3, like the GTR, which were limited to only 10 in number, would even go on to win the 24 hours of Nurburgring in 2004 and 2005.

While the E30 M3 has the floor for now, we guarantee this is going to be a future classic. Prices are still reasonable, so it would be incredible to grab one right now before they reach the clouds.

I’ve had my eye on one of these for a very long time and it would be a shame if I cannot own one in my lifetime. #iwantone. Or at least give me the revvy-boi S54 powerplant in my E30.

Famous faces to own an E46 M3

While we usually post celebrities with some of the GOATs in their garages, this one was a bit difficult to track down. 

But we did find out that Jessica Alba and Dave Navarro had the keys to this understated ride of epically muscular proportions. 

Since Dave Navarro isn’t all that pretty to look at, here’s a picture of early 2000s Jessica Alba and a little bit of her E46 M3.