The Best M3 Ever? We’ve Had A Massive Argument, And Here’s What Happened.
Right, Let’s Settle This Once And For All
There are questions that have plagued humanity since the dawn of civilisation. The meaning of life. Whether there’s a God. And which BMW M3 is the greatest driving machine ever bolted together by slightly obsessive Germans in Munich.
The first two we’ll leave to the philosophers. The third one? That’s ours.
Because here’s the thing about the M3 — it isn’t just a car. It’s a statement. A rolling argument. A machine that has, since 1986, been telling every other performance saloon to go home and have a long, hard think about itself. Ferrari builds rolling sculpture. Porsche builds rolling precision instruments. BMW M builds the car that makes you feel like you’re the best driver in the world, even when you almost certainly aren’t.
So which one? Which generation of this magnificent, maddening, occasionally rod-bearing-eating machine actually deserves the crown? We’ve fought about it. Loudly. Over several pints. Here’s where we landed.
The Analog Era: When Men Were Men and Steering Wheels Had Feelings
E30 M3 (1986–1991): The One That Started A Religion
Picture the scene. It’s 1986. Germany is winning the DTM championship with a purpose-built touring car. BMW’s homologation requirement means they have to sell road versions. The accountants look terrified. The engineers look delighted. The result is the E30 M3, and it is essentially a race car wearing a thin disguise of carpets and door cards.
The S14 engine — a 2.3-litre screaming four-cylinder — makes around 200 horsepower. By modern standards, that’s barely enough to embarrass a hot hatchback. But that number means nothing in context, because the E30 M3 weighs approximately the same as a medium-sized dining table, and it talks to you. Constantly. Through the steering wheel, through the seat, through the pedals, through some form of automotive telepathy that modern engineers have apparently decided nobody wants anymore.
Those flared arches. That ducktail spoiler. The glorious, slightly agricultural sound of that four-cylinder working its way to seven thousand RPM. This is the platonic ideal of what a sports car should be: small, communicative, tied directly to the motorsport world that created it.
The downsides? Well. It’s expensive now because the rest of the world has also noticed it’s brilliant. It’s the least powerful M3 ever made. And if you prang one, you’ll cry actual tears, because finding a clean example is harder than explaining a 3-Series depreciation curve to someone who’s just bought a brand new one.
But if you want to understand what BMW M Division is actually about — what’s at the core of the whole enterprise — you need to drive an E30 M3. Everything else is commentary.
E36 M3 (1992–1999): The Sensible One That’s Better Than You Remember
James May would love the E36. It’s the M3 that grew up. Put on a proper suit. Got a mortgage. And is somehow more charming for it.
The inline-six — the silky, beautiful, completely undeserved engine that this car received — transformed the M3 from a racer into something you could genuinely live with. The ride didn’t rattle your fillings loose. The cabin felt like it was designed by someone who’d actually sat in a car before. You could take it to Waitrose without feeling theatrical about it.
Yes, the Americans got a slightly strangled version. Yes, it lacks the raw drama of what came before. But here’s the thing about the E36 that nobody says loudly enough: on a great road, with a great driver, it’s wonderful. It’s balanced in a way that rewards patience and smoothness, which are — and I cannot stress this enough — the actual skills that distinguish good driving from fast driving.
It’s also, historically, been the cheapest way into M3 ownership. Which means an entire generation of enthusiasts learned to drive properly in one, which means the E36 quietly, without fuss, produced more skilled drivers than almost any other car. Not glamorous. Enormously important.
The Peak of Human Achievement: No Turbos, No Excuses
E46 M3 (2000–2006): The Untouchable
Right. Here we go.
The S54. The 3.2-litre naturally aspirated inline-six. The engine that BMW engineers apparently built in a fever dream of perfection and then looked at each other afterwards going “should we… should we even be allowed to do this?”
Ask any ten proper enthusiasts which M3 is the best. Eight of them will say E46 before you’ve finished the question. The other two are being deliberately contrarian and should be treated with appropriate suspicion.
The throttle response is instantaneous — not quick, instantaneous, as though the engine and your right foot have entered into some kind of direct neural agreement to ignore the rest of the car entirely. The top end is addictive. The sound — from around 5,000 RPM to the red line — is the sort of thing that makes grown adults pull over on motorway slip roads just to do it again.
And the chassis. Oh, the chassis. The E46 M3 is sized perfectly — not too wide, not too light, not too stiff — in a way that makes it feel custom-fitted to the human body. It turns in with intent. It rotates with trust. It tells you, at every corner, exactly what the rear tyres are doing, which means you can lean on it, push it, and occasionally hang it completely sideways with the confidence of someone who absolutely knows what they’re doing. (Even if they don’t.)
Known issues: the rod bearings need attention, and the rear subframe can crack if previous owners were enthusiastic and negligent simultaneously. Both are fixable. Neither is a reason not to buy one.
The CSL — Europe only, lighter, sharper, carbon-everything — is the E46 distilled further still. It may be the finest M3 ever made. It is certainly the most expensive clean one.
If the E30 is the founding document of the M3 philosophy, the E46 is the masterwork. The one where everything aligned perfectly. The one they’ll be writing about in a hundred years.
E90/E92/E93 M3 (2007–2013): The Glorious, Magnificent, Utterly Unrepeatable Mistake
At some point during the development of the E9x M3, someone at BMW raised their hand in a meeting and said “what if we put a V8 in it?”
And instead of the room laughing them out of the building, someone in a position of authority said “…tell me more.”
The S65. 4.0-litres. Naturally aspirated. Eight cylinders. Eight and a half thousand RPM. And a noise — a noise — that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your right foot press harder than your brain has authorised.
This is not an engine. This is a event. Winding it out to the red line is one of those automotive experiences you carry with you forever, like the first time you drove something rear-wheel drive in the wet, or the first time a really good sports car revealed what “connected” actually means. It’s singular. It’s irreplaceable. And BMW will almost certainly never make anything quite like it again.
The E92 coupe, specifically — late afternoon, mountain road, windows down — is the sort of driving experience that makes you briefly emotional in a way you can’t fully explain to people who aren’t enthusiasts.
Yes, it’s heavier than the E46. Yes, the rod bearings are also a concern (BMW really did go through a phase). Yes, the throttle actuators can be expensive. None of that matters when the engine is singing. This is the M3 for people whose hearts do the decision-making, and frankly, those are the best people.
The Turbocharged Era: Faster Than Everything, Slightly Less Poetic
F80 M3 (2014–2018): The Efficient Genius
The F80 is the M3 for people who want to win arguments at traffic lights and also do 30 miles to the gallon on the motorway. The twin-turbo S55 inline-six makes enormous power, delivers it in a wave of accessible torque, and is frankly terrifying in the sort of way that modern performance cars have become terrifying — not through drama, but through sheer, relentless, electronically-mediated competence.
The criticisms are real and fair: the electric steering doesn’t communicate with the same intimacy as the hydraulic setups it replaced, and the exhaust note, while not bad, lacks the operatic quality of what came before. It’s a sports car that’s very good at being a sports car, in the same way that a spreadsheet is very good at being a spreadsheet. Correct. Efficient. Not something you’d hang on your wall.
But here’s the defence: the F80 is fast. Properly, embarrassingly, “where did that junction go” fast. And on a track, where lap times are the language, it speaks fluently.
G80 M3 (2021–Present): The One That Does Everything
The G80 is the best M3 ever built, in the same way that a Swiss Army knife is the best tool ever made. It does everything. It’s fast in the dry. It’s fast in the wet, because there’s now a four-wheel drive version. The interior feels like a proper luxury product. The technology is sophisticated. The numbers — all of the numbers, horsepower, torque, lap times — are extraordinary.
It is also enormous. And heavy. And it has a grille that looks like it’s trying to eat the car in front of it. And it is — and this is the critical thing — further from the E30’s original brief than any M3 before it. Which is fine. Progress is fine. But if you’re measuring “M3-ness” rather than outright capability, the G80 is the answer to a slightly different question than the one the E30 asked.
As a do-everything performance machine — daily driver, long-distance tourer, track day weapon, school run nightmare — it is genuinely, remarkably complete. If you want one car and you want it to be brilliant at everything, here it is.
The Verdict: Who Wins?
For the purist: E30. No argument. It’s the original. Everything else is a sequel.
For the enthusiast: E46. The perfect balance of analogue soul and modern usability. The one BMW got exactly right.
For the drama queen (meant affectionately): E92. Because if you’re not slightly emotional at 8,400 RPM, you may need to check whether you’re actually alive.
For the pragmatist: G80. The fastest, most capable, most complete. The one that wins every objective test.
Our verdict: The E46 wears the crown. Not because it’s the fastest, or the loudest, or the most technically accomplished. But because it represents the M3 at its most pure — the moment where BMW’s engineers took everything that made the original special, refined it to its highest form, and produced something that no successor has quite managed to replicate. It’s the car you’d choose if you could only have one, forever, and you actually cared about what driving is supposed to feel like.
But honestly? There’s no wrong answer. Every M3 is the right M3 for someone. And that, more than anything, is why this badge has meant something for forty years.
The Best M3 Ever? We’ve Had A Massive Argument, And Here’s What Happened.
Right, Let’s Settle This Once And For All
There are questions that have plagued humanity since the dawn of civilisation. The meaning of life. Whether there’s a God. And which BMW M3 is the greatest driving machine ever bolted together by slightly obsessive Germans in Munich.
The first two we’ll leave to the philosophers. The third one? That’s ours.
Because here’s the thing about the M3 — it isn’t just a car. It’s a statement. A rolling argument. A machine that has, since 1986, been telling every other performance saloon to go home and have a long, hard think about itself. Ferrari builds rolling sculpture. Porsche builds rolling precision instruments. BMW M builds the car that makes you feel like you’re the best driver in the world, even when you almost certainly aren’t.
So which one? Which generation of this magnificent, maddening, occasionally rod-bearing-eating machine actually deserves the crown? We’ve fought about it. Loudly. Over several pints. Here’s where we landed.
The Analog Era: When Men Were Men and Steering Wheels Had Feelings
E30 M3 (1986–1991): The One That Started A Religion
Picture the scene. It’s 1986. Germany is winning the DTM championship with a purpose-built touring car. BMW’s homologation requirement means they have to sell road versions. The accountants look terrified. The engineers look delighted. The result is the E30 M3, and it is essentially a race car wearing a thin disguise of carpets and door cards.
The S14 engine — a 2.3-litre screaming four-cylinder — makes around 200 horsepower. By modern standards, that’s barely enough to embarrass a hot hatchback. But that number means nothing in context, because the E30 M3 weighs approximately the same as a medium-sized dining table, and it talks to you. Constantly. Through the steering wheel, through the seat, through the pedals, through some form of automotive telepathy that modern engineers have apparently decided nobody wants anymore.
Those flared arches. That ducktail spoiler. The glorious, slightly agricultural sound of that four-cylinder working its way to seven thousand RPM. This is the platonic ideal of what a sports car should be: small, communicative, tied directly to the motorsport world that created it.
The downsides? Well. It’s expensive now because the rest of the world has also noticed it’s brilliant. It’s the least powerful M3 ever made. And if you prang one, you’ll cry actual tears, because finding a clean example is harder than explaining a 3-Series depreciation curve to someone who’s just bought a brand new one.
But if you want to understand what BMW M Division is actually about — what’s at the core of the whole enterprise — you need to drive an E30 M3. Everything else is commentary.
E36 M3 (1992–1999): The Sensible One That’s Better Than You Remember
James May would love the E36. It’s the M3 that grew up. Put on a proper suit. Got a mortgage. And is somehow more charming for it.
The inline-six — the silky, beautiful, completely undeserved engine that this car received — transformed the M3 from a racer into something you could genuinely live with. The ride didn’t rattle your fillings loose. The cabin felt like it was designed by someone who’d actually sat in a car before. You could take it to Waitrose without feeling theatrical about it.
Yes, the Americans got a slightly strangled version. Yes, it lacks the raw drama of what came before. But here’s the thing about the E36 that nobody says loudly enough: on a great road, with a great driver, it’s wonderful. It’s balanced in a way that rewards patience and smoothness, which are — and I cannot stress this enough — the actual skills that distinguish good driving from fast driving.
It’s also, historically, been the cheapest way into M3 ownership. Which means an entire generation of enthusiasts learned to drive properly in one, which means the E36 quietly, without fuss, produced more skilled drivers than almost any other car. Not glamorous. Enormously important.
The Peak of Human Achievement: No Turbos, No Excuses
E46 M3 (2000–2006): The Untouchable
Right. Here we go.
The S54. The 3.2-litre naturally aspirated inline-six. The engine that BMW engineers apparently built in a fever dream of perfection and then looked at each other afterwards going “should we… should we even be allowed to do this?”
Ask any ten proper enthusiasts which M3 is the best. Eight of them will say E46 before you’ve finished the question. The other two are being deliberately contrarian and should be treated with appropriate suspicion.
The throttle response is instantaneous — not quick, instantaneous, as though the engine and your right foot have entered into some kind of direct neural agreement to ignore the rest of the car entirely. The top end is addictive. The sound — from around 5,000 RPM to the red line — is the sort of thing that makes grown adults pull over on motorway slip roads just to do it again.
And the chassis. Oh, the chassis. The E46 M3 is sized perfectly — not too wide, not too light, not too stiff — in a way that makes it feel custom-fitted to the human body. It turns in with intent. It rotates with trust. It tells you, at every corner, exactly what the rear tyres are doing, which means you can lean on it, push it, and occasionally hang it completely sideways with the confidence of someone who absolutely knows what they’re doing. (Even if they don’t.)
Known issues: the rod bearings need attention, and the rear subframe can crack if previous owners were enthusiastic and negligent simultaneously. Both are fixable. Neither is a reason not to buy one.
The CSL — Europe only, lighter, sharper, carbon-everything — is the E46 distilled further still. It may be the finest M3 ever made. It is certainly the most expensive clean one.
If the E30 is the founding document of the M3 philosophy, the E46 is the masterwork. The one where everything aligned perfectly. The one they’ll be writing about in a hundred years.
E90/E92/E93 M3 (2007–2013): The Glorious, Magnificent, Utterly Unrepeatable Mistake
At some point during the development of the E9x M3, someone at BMW raised their hand in a meeting and said “what if we put a V8 in it?”
And instead of the room laughing them out of the building, someone in a position of authority said “…tell me more.”
The S65. 4.0-litres. Naturally aspirated. Eight cylinders. Eight and a half thousand RPM. And a noise — a noise — that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your right foot press harder than your brain has authorised.
This is not an engine. This is a event. Winding it out to the red line is one of those automotive experiences you carry with you forever, like the first time you drove something rear-wheel drive in the wet, or the first time a really good sports car revealed what “connected” actually means. It’s singular. It’s irreplaceable. And BMW will almost certainly never make anything quite like it again.
The E92 coupe, specifically — late afternoon, mountain road, windows down — is the sort of driving experience that makes you briefly emotional in a way you can’t fully explain to people who aren’t enthusiasts.
Yes, it’s heavier than the E46. Yes, the rod bearings are also a concern (BMW really did go through a phase). Yes, the throttle actuators can be expensive. None of that matters when the engine is singing. This is the M3 for people whose hearts do the decision-making, and frankly, those are the best people.
The Turbocharged Era: Faster Than Everything, Slightly Less Poetic
F80 M3 (2014–2018): The Efficient Genius
The F80 is the M3 for people who want to win arguments at traffic lights and also do 30 miles to the gallon on the motorway. The twin-turbo S55 inline-six makes enormous power, delivers it in a wave of accessible torque, and is frankly terrifying in the sort of way that modern performance cars have become terrifying — not through drama, but through sheer, relentless, electronically-mediated competence.
The criticisms are real and fair: the electric steering doesn’t communicate with the same intimacy as the hydraulic setups it replaced, and the exhaust note, while not bad, lacks the operatic quality of what came before. It’s a sports car that’s very good at being a sports car, in the same way that a spreadsheet is very good at being a spreadsheet. Correct. Efficient. Not something you’d hang on your wall.
But here’s the defence: the F80 is fast. Properly, embarrassingly, “where did that junction go” fast. And on a track, where lap times are the language, it speaks fluently.
G80 M3 (2021–Present): The One That Does Everything
The G80 is the best M3 ever built, in the same way that a Swiss Army knife is the best tool ever made. It does everything. It’s fast in the dry. It’s fast in the wet, because there’s now a four-wheel drive version. The interior feels like a proper luxury product. The technology is sophisticated. The numbers — all of the numbers, horsepower, torque, lap times — are extraordinary.
It is also enormous. And heavy. And it has a grille that looks like it’s trying to eat the car in front of it. And it is — and this is the critical thing — further from the E30’s original brief than any M3 before it. Which is fine. Progress is fine. But if you’re measuring “M3-ness” rather than outright capability, the G80 is the answer to a slightly different question than the one the E30 asked.
As a do-everything performance machine — daily driver, long-distance tourer, track day weapon, school run nightmare — it is genuinely, remarkably complete. If you want one car and you want it to be brilliant at everything, here it is.
The Verdict: Who Wins?
For the purist: E30. No argument. It’s the original. Everything else is a sequel.
For the enthusiast: E46. The perfect balance of analogue soul and modern usability. The one BMW got exactly right.
For the drama queen (meant affectionately): E92. Because if you’re not slightly emotional at 8,400 RPM, you may need to check whether you’re actually alive.
For the pragmatist: G80. The fastest, most capable, most complete. The one that wins every objective test.
Our verdict: The E46 wears the crown. Not because it’s the fastest, or the loudest, or the most technically accomplished. But because it represents the M3 at its most pure — the moment where BMW’s engineers took everything that made the original special, refined it to its highest form, and produced something that no successor has quite managed to replicate. It’s the car you’d choose if you could only have one, forever, and you actually cared about what driving is supposed to feel like.
But honestly? There’s no wrong answer. Every M3 is the right M3 for someone. And that, more than anything, is why this badge has meant something for forty years.