BMW M3 CS
By Jeremy Clarkson of The Sunday Times - - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Get one fast before they muck it up



Many thousands of years ago, I was a member of the Ford Cortina 1600E Owners Club (South Yorkshire branch). We’d meet once a month, in a car park, and would mooch about in the rain looking at one another’s cars. Looking back on the experience, I really can’t see why this should have had any appeal at all. I mean, yes, my car had a picture of Debbie Harry in the centre of the steering wheel, but other than that it was pretty much the same as everyone else’s car.

Perhaps we thought that because we all had the same type of car we had a common bond, a platform on which lasting friendships could be built. But they were all miners. And when they lost their jobs a few years later they had to burn their cars to stay warm. So the bond was gone.

Today I loathe, with a furious passion, all car clubs. The notion that you’re going to get on with someone because he also has a Mini is preposterous. Clubs are for people who can’t get friends in the conventional way. They’re for bores and murderers.

The Ferrari Owners’ Club is particularly depressing because they all have carpet warehouses in Dewsbury and creaking £10,000 rust buckets from the Seventies and Eighties.

Most turn up at events in Ferrari hats, Ferrari shirts, Ferrari racing booties and Ferrari aftershave and you can’t help thinking: “For heaven’s sake, man. You’ve spent more on your apparel then you have on your damn Mondial.”

Anyone with the wherewithal to buy a proper, important Ferrari from the past 60 years is going to have better things to do with his time than drive to some windswept motor racing circuit no one has ever heard of and spend the day watching a bunch of Dewsburyites going off the road backwards in their botched and bodged 308s.

Mind you, I’d rather swap saliva with someone from the Ferrari Owners’ Club than go within 50,000 miles of someone who turns up to Aston Martin events. Because there are no cheap Astons in the classifieds — well, none that will actually get you to an owners’ club meeting, or even to the end of your road — the members are a lot more well-to-do than their oppos with Ferraris. There are few regional accents, and lots of green ink.

All of them are stuck in the 1950s when for a few glorious years Aston Martin did manage to win a couple of not-very-important racing events. And all of them, you know, were attracted to the brand not because Aston made the best cars — it really, really didn’t. But because they were made by British people and not “darkies”.

The worst thing about an Aston Martin Owners Club member, however, is not his politics, or his still burning flame of hatred for Harold Wilson. It isn’t even his shoes, or his trousers. No. It’s the way he refers to all previous Astons by their chassis numbers. And to the people who raced them by their nicknames.

“Do you remember when Pinky and Lofty drove xvr/ii-2? Course that was before bloody Wilson.” Sometimes, when they talk to me. I find myself wondering what they’d look like without a spine.

Moving, slowly, towards the point of this morning’s column, I must alight now at the BMW Drivers’ Club, or whatever it’s called, which used to host an annual event at the Nürburgring. This was an opportunity for them to turn up and show off their new short-sleeved shirts. I went once and it looked like a meeting of the Jim Rosenthal Appreciation Society.

Anyway, what they do, once they’ve examined one another’s leisure attire, is drive round the track and then get marked by judges for speed, accuracy and knowledge of the track. I came 197th out of 201.

Naturally, this was the car’s fault. I’d taken one of the very first M3s, the left-hand-drive quasi-racer, which was great if you knew what you were doing, but a twitchy little bastard if you had fists of ham and fingers of butter. If you turned in to a corner with a little too much power, the back would swing wide — this was before traction control — and soon you’d be careering across the grass on your way to what Aston Martin Owners Club people call “ the scene of the accident. Ho-ho”.



Unfortunately you’d also find yourself on the grass if you turned in with not quite enough power, or if you applied too much lock, or not enough lock, or the right amount of lock but a mite too quickly or a little too slowly. I hated that car with a passion.

Over the years, of course, BMW toned the M3 down to make it a little easier for nincompoops. But you know what, I’ve never driven a single one that I’ve liked. The last time I reviewed an M3 in The Sunday Times I said it was probably the worst car in the world. It was a convertible and the whole thing shuddered and shook over bumps. Plus, it had an early incarnation of BMW’s flappy paddle gearbox that was diabolical.

Friends kept telling me that the core of the car was sensational and that I was being put off by the trimmings. Yes, in the same way that I’d be put off eating a delicious shepherd’s pie if the chef had sneezed all over it.

Subsequently I tried the CSL version on the Isle of Man. This had a carbon fibre roof, a sequential gearbox, a boot floor made from cardboard and a big nostril in the front. It was very fast, and on the super-smooth TT circuit it was sensational. But on all other roads the ride was utterly brutal. So hard that it actually shook the tape off the heads of our television cameras.

And so it was that, never having driven a normal, non-sneezed-on M3, I tried Audi’s new RS 4. It was wonderful. Much better, I declared, than the BMW. And that would have been that until the new M3, with a V8, comes along later this year.

But then, last week, guess what rocked up at my house? One of the very last of the old M3s. They call it the CS because it has slightly faster steering than the ordinary model, along with slightly larger brakes and bigger wheels. But other than this it was standard. There was a proper manual gearbox, a roof, no iDrive, no sauce and no garnish. Finally, then, I was going to have to drive in the pie, sans phlegm.

Ooh, it’s a handsome thing. The body seems to have been stretched over the wheels, in the same way that bodybuilders’ skin appears to have been stretched over their muscles.

And inside everything is just so. Oh sure, the sat nav system is from the generation before BMW had even the first inkling how to make such a thing work, but the driving position, the moleskin steering wheel. It was all . . . just so right.

Not as right, however, as the way this thing drives. God, it’s good. And it’s even better when you push the little “sport” button. This sharpens everything up even more, like you’ve given your horse a taste of the whip.

There’s none of the early M3 skittishness and terror, and (sat nav aside) no stupid forays into technologies that don’t work. It’s just a beautifully balanced, forgiving and thrilling driving machine.

So, if you’re after a car of this type, what to do? Wait for the new M3? Dive in now and get a CS? Or go for the Audi RS 4? That’s a hard one. I’m sure the new M3 will be a thrilling car. But I’m also sure it’ll look like a big pile of dog sick, so we can discount that. That leaves us with the Audi and the CS.

And that gives us one of the most delicious choices in any corner of the motoring universe.

I’d have the Audi, for its engine. You might well go for the BMW, for its poise. And you know what? We’d both be winners.





-Model: BMW M3 CS

-Engine type: 3246cc, six cylinders

-Power: 338bhp @ 7900rpm

-Torque: 269 lb ft @ 4900rpm

-Transmission: Six-speed manual

-Fuel: 21.1mpg (combined cycle)

-CO²: 323g/km

-Acceleration: 0-62mph: 5.2sec

-Top speed: 155mph

-Price: £44,850

-Rating:

-Verdict: A rocket; sneeze and you’ll miss it

bah, typical Clarkson babbling, he's right about the E46 M3 and RS4 being two great cars though, better still how tough a choice it would be to choose between one or the other. Personally, I'd take the Nurbrigring hooligan.... anyday.

He's so ignorant about BMWs, its not even funny.

Then you can call me ignorant too. Personally, I feel that this BMW M3 CS, combined with the Z4 M Coupe will probably be the last 'true' M Division vehicle. It's not overleaden with mindless amounts of technology (ahem, iDrive, P400/P500), it's light and it's just got everything you need in a car. And no more.

After the demise of both the E46 M3 and the Z4 M, future M Division vehicles will be so computer-obsessed, we will not longer drive the car - the car will drive us.

If anyone is willing to tell me, why oh why, such advanced technological developments are needed in such a highly-focused performance car, please, do tell.

Have you driven the new M5 or M6? I have and I tell you what, that car loves to be driven by a driver.

I agree with you. With the E46 is just sit and drive no complications, it's allready configured for you. The M5 and M6 has lots of setting which might be confusing and annoying. Sometimes simplicity is best. Hopefully in 3 years I'll afford a E46 M3 when the value of the cars has dropped to a >350k level.

The Z4 M is a very new car, so it shows BMW can still make simple cars!

For all you know, there may be two types of M cars!

So if it's still a driver's car, like you say, what's the point of all the electronics in the car? The E30 M3 was an awesome drivers car, yet, curiously, it had nothing - no traction control, no ESP, no iDrive etc. How have these electronics made the M5/6 twins a better driver's car than the E30 M3? Because surely, if they needed to have so much computers, it would become a 'better driver's car' than a comparative E30 M3 with no computers, right?

And that's the thing. These cars don't need the mass of computers to be a good car. It's been proven over the past hundred years cars have existed on our roads. Why is it now that we think that computers will become the dominating factor in making good, fast cars?

BMW_Dude, I appreciate your optimism, but seriously? The only reason, I think, why the Z4 M is so bare-bones is that it's due to be replaced in a number of years and BMW cannot be bothered throwing more development money at it - so it ended up just having a mix-and-match of various M Division vehicles. There's no doubting that the E90/2 M3 will become an M5 Jr. and consequent M cars will follow this pattern of cramming more and more computers into the car.

damn, I wish I had a M5 for you, I would love to proove you wrong. You would love the M5, no doubt.

BTW M5/M6 is getting a Manual so will the next M3 so I dont see the problem if SMG is available for those who wants it. SMGII and manual is available for M3 E46, the same with M3 E90.

Man if you fixed an M5 for me to test drive I would lend you one of my kidneys. BTW what's the point of a P400 and a P500 mode, just to save a few milliliters of fuel per miles?