The Story of the Greatest BMW Ever Made

Around 200 years BC, Archimedes is quoted as saying: Give me a l

ever

long enough and I can move the world. It was a bold proclamation, but he got the right tool right, with a big enough hammer or a sharp enough blade. Humans can be capable of anything. It is these tools we create that separate us from mere animals. And that connection between man and his machines is the

story

of how we overcome

ever

y limitation that was imposed on us. In 1986, that connection became absolute in an era of turbo-powered monstrosities tearing up gravel roads, with Japanese technology dominating on a global scale.

Some engineers in Germany had something to prove with finesse and balance. They could combine man with machine in such a way that they would be unstoppable. They created something innovative, designed to be perfectly balanced and capable of navigating anything from the tight curves of city streets to the long banked curves of the green hell. It was unbeatable. What was created was possibly the best driver's car ever built and was called the M three. A small round emblem is stamped on the hood of the best German cars, a circle filled with blue and white, evoking the image of a white propeller spinning against a blue sky.

There is a reason for that. In the 1920s, BMW

made

airplane engines of the type that were the envy of the world. Yes. Prepare. I'm talking about airplanes again. Among the ranks of BMW engineers was a man named Willy Messerschmidt. In his spare time, Wyllie designed record-breaking gliders. However, he wanted to do much more. He wanted to conquer the heavens. So in the 1920s, he told BMW to bend and founded his own airplane company. Luckily, well, maybe not lucky for everyone... at that time. Some idiot had taken power in Germany and wanted to conquer the world and the military idiots organized a design competition for new planes that would help lead Germany to victory.

Young Willy saw his opportunity to forge a path and make a name for himself. The problem was that this competition they had participated in had many rules. Rules? Rules are often considered the enemy. And after reading many of your comments, I can tell that many of you really hate the group A rules. The restrictions placed on the R 32 GT-R To Le Mans basically ban the 787B after its victory in '91. Rules appear in the surface. to stop us. But, you see, where we find limitations, we usually find innovation. And so, with the rules in place, the task at hand was to design a highly maneuverable single-seat mail delivery plane that could be sold to the public, but was actually intended to carry a lot of weapons and fly over London. after many sleepless nights and a little liquor.

Willie did it. He wrote the design of the B.F. 109. It was revolutionary for its simplicity and as fast as it was agile. It entered production at a record pace and its first battles took place in Spain. Just two weeks after the Olympic Games. Then Italy. Poland. Normandy. Leningrad. Egypt. The oxen, one or nine V 12, were still grumbling overhead when the war came to an end. And in its wake, it had claimed more lives than any other plane. Fifteen of the best aces of World War II flew 109s, most of them achieving more than 200 victories. Eric Hartmann, the war's top ace and trainer of the 109th, shot down only 352 planes.

The top American pilot managed to shoot down only 40. In total, 20,000 aircraft were shot down by the weapons mounted on the BF109, making it an order of magnitude deadlier than even its closest rival. And he didn't get there with firepower, but with finesse. The 109th did not have the most weapons. It didn't have the biggest guns and was far from the most armored. Due to the strict regulations imposed by the Luftwaffe at the beginning, the BF109 should have been surpassed on paper by its contemporaries, the Spitfire and the later P-51 Mustang. But it was not because its power lay not in its guns, its engine or its structure, but in the combined balance of all its parts in the hands of a pilot who

made

split decisions, choices between life and death.

You wanted a machine capable of reacting quickly. A tool that practically reads your mind. Now you know if you have seen this channel. War has a habit of spurring innovation. In the 1980s, wars were not fought with guns and bombs. The battles were fought on asphalt. The shots were fired from the exhaust pipes. And yet the bloodlust was the same. The automotive landscape of the 1980s was plagued by disasters. Fuel had become scarce thanks to the oil crisis of the 1970s. The big gas-guzzling burners on Germany's autobahns were becoming a tougher sell. That meant that racing cars derived from their road-going counterparts were slowly becoming smaller and lighter, with more fuel-efficient engines.

In Germany, the king of small passenger cars was Mercedes, whose 190E was not only one of the best-selling German cars. He was causing a sensation in the racing world and this greatly upset Mercedes. You see, the Stuttgart luxury giant canceled the racing program after Audi handed over its assets to them, which is a

story

for another time. But you see, Mercedes-Benz's own engineers went rogue. They still wanted to race, so they partnered with AMG and started building race-ready versions of the 190E anyway. These renegade key-turners set their sights on an upcoming series, The Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft or DTM, a series started in 1984 to help promote Germany's best automobiles and show the world that they were more than stuffy beer snobs and pretzel-eaters coincidentally. with the start of the DTM.

The infamous Nurburgring had just reopened after major renovations. To celebrate both the new racing series and the opening of the Ring, the Race of Champions was held in the Green Hell, a race that consisted solely of Mercedes 190 E driven by the best champion drivers. When the smoke cleared, none other than Ayrton Senna, who we have mentioned several times before, took to the top of the podium. So in the 1980s the world was celebrating 190 praising Mercedes Benz, Ayrton Senna, the green hell, the DTM. All of this was driving BMW crazy and they weren't going to take it anymore.

Unfortunately, BMW was stuck in the past. They were still stuck in the seventies, still racing big, heavy cars and not doing a good job. Sure. With the help of Bob Lutz, yes. That Bob Lutz. BMW had created its new M Division, an optimistic effort to lead all of BMW's motorsports operations. His goal was the DTM. It was the racing series in Europe in the early 1980s. The DTM adhered to the strict FIA Group A rules, the boring tomb of numbers and graphs that dictate what a racing car should be. But love them or hate them, rules make races.

And the DTM was no exception. Rule number one was possibly the most important homologation. In the DTM, each entry had to be based on a production car and, unlike other homologated racing series, they meant it. Most racing series require around 500 road cars for homologation, meaning manufacturers can make one-off cars that were hand-built in low numbers. You know, racing cars, but the DTM and Group A really wanted to pressure the manufacturers to use their real cars in a race. So they increased that number to 5,000 copies a year. What that meant was that most companies competing in the DTM had to take a real car from their range and turn it into a racing car.

Thus, at the beginning of the DTM, BMW would compete with its 635 CSI. They put some sticky rubber on it and actually won their first DTM championship. When Volker Strycek managed to stay ahead of the Vitesse rover. However, the following year, the series six proved too heavy to compete with the new group B-inspired lightweight cars. It took third place behind Volvo and Rover and could never climb to the top again. What's worse, in 1986, Mercedes had decided to throw its weight behind the 190E. It was no longer a shoddy project done by a ragtag team of engineers. Stuttgart had entered the fight.

In 1986 they took second place from BMW, but Ford took the title. The battle for black, red and yellow was dominated by a blue oval. You can imagine what that felt like for a nation of proud engineers. The writing was on the wall. The future of motor sport involved small, light and efficient designs. BMW race cars would need to hit the gym, lose weight, and get smart, because if they didn't, the future would be led by the 190E and Mercedes. And that didn't sit well with Eberhard von Kuenheim, CEO of BMW, and a man whose name I've probably just butchered.

Thanks to him, the BMW name would no longer be dragged through the mud. The blue and white circle would shine in the sun again. Eberhard had a burning passion, a fire that he could not quell. He wanted BMW to be on top. There is no second line for Mercedes, Audi or anyone else who dares to make luxury cars. When Eberhard became CEO, BMW was an unfocused mess. It was the 1970s and they were still recovering from World War II. They made the occasional motorcycle, a few roadable cars, and faced the threat of bankruptcy several times. Eberhard took the reins of the company and took it in a new direction.

And with the help of the new career-driven M Division and Bob Lutz, he began to push the company in a completely new direction. Ultimate Driving Machines, cars that would inspire passion in their owners. They are no longer mere appliances that take you from A to B and that are thrown away when a new model comes out. to show the public that these were the works of passion that they claim to be. BMW was going to need to win races. So, to make Eberhard's dream come true, he ordered the Motor Sports Division to commit to a task.

Gain. Build the fastest BMW passenger car. Unleash all the efforts of its motorsport division on the DTM and put Ford, the 190E and anyone who dares to challenge them in their place. There was only one problem: a homologated race car needs to be homologated, unlike blind eyes turning to group B, BMW couldn't exactly build a winning race car without also having a decent road car. And the best they had to offer at the time was a timid little grocery shopper. But it had potential. The 3 Series is a car that is for BMW what the Civic is for Honda, the sales leader, the bread and butter.

In the 1980s, the BMW 3 Series had no hope of competing with the 190 E in racing format. It suffered from an anemic engine, one that BMW had been using since the damn sixties and that barely reached 100 horsepower. And the body itself was too small and narrow for fat racing tires. All three series would need a complete overhaul to be able to take on the Fords and Benzes on the German track. However, the rules were simple. Whatever you brought to compete in the DTM, you had to make the most of it. It was the hand they were dealt.

BMW's top brass thought: Well, okay. If the rule is that we have to use a production car, then we will avoid making all three series competitive and just build a race car and sell it to the public. Somewhere, a sweltering German accountant woke up in his bed, his face drenched in sweat. Visions of bankruptcies and layoffs in his head. Furious, the number-crunchers invaded Eberhard's office to demand that this enterprise be stopped. BMW would lose money, infinite sums, if it tried to sell fast cars to regular customers. Eberhard listened politely, nodded, stood up, shook their hands, and ignored everything they said.

You see, his vision was singular. They were going to win at all costs. And so the M division would continue with its important task. This would be the defining moment for BMW, a day when they would stand up, lift their chests and punch Mercedes in the face. And so it was that the M division would be tasked with saving BMW on the world stage. With marching orders in hand. They dedicated themselves with concentrated minds to an important task. Take a three-series into a well-lit garage, strip it down, strip it down to the chassis, and rebuild it from the ground up with a singular purpose.

Win, win, everything. His first step was to figure out what to feed the damn thing. As I said before, the three-series engine was not going to be enough and the E30 presented a pretty major problem. Was small. Its short hood couldn't accommodate a huge power plant, so they were going to have to be smart. Fortunately, BMW had been making internal combustion masterpieces for some time and that was largely thanks to a man named Paul Roche. Soundsfamiliar? All my stories have characters that repeat themselves. Paul, who later designed the McLaren F1 engine, was on hand to bring the M3 to life.

Paul was a BMW thoroughbred and possibly the

greatest

engine designer who ever lived. Before the e30, he had gotten his hands on the racing engine built for the mediocre supercar, the M1. Paul's M 88/1, which had tested the M1 in Group Five, was a proven winner and by the mid-1980s BMW was set to replace it with the S38, the petrol rocket that would power the M5 and the M6, but the S38 was too big for the diminutive M3, and the M3's focus was light weight over pure grunt. So Roche decided to start with the BMW M 10, an inline four-cylinder that BMW had been using since the 1950s.

It was rock solid, reliable and light. Its teeth were cut in Formula One, where it served as the basis of the most powerful F1 engine of all time. The 1500 horsepower M12. For the finishing touches, Paul took the cylinder head from his legendary M88 engine and literally cut off two cylinder banks, welded them to a steel plate to cover the hole, and placed it on top of the M10. Like the previous M88, the new engine would also have individual throttle bodies and reinforced internal components to withstand the ravages of high-level racing. The result was a lightweight and durable beast of a motor.

The S 14 is so called because it only took Paul Roche 14 days to design it. While it was small and not exuberant in its horsepower figures, its bark was as strong as its bite and the S14 bit hard. Translating the S14 notes to the driveshaft was a Getrag five-speed with a dogleg design. Dogleg means that instead of going down from first in second, you would go up to second and go down to third. A design that is uncomfortable in a road car, but on a race track where you go from second to third more often, especially when screaming out of an apex, a dogleg saves tenths of a second and fractions of a second in the DTM were the difference between the podium and the pits.

No stone is left unturned. The suspension, brakes and exhausts were also put on the operating table. The focus was on weight savings and durability. The M3 had to perform on the track and only see rubber and fuel during a pit stop. It became wider. It became lighter. It even has an extra stud per wheel so you can better handle high GS and cornering outside. The E30 M3 shared very little with the skeleton. It was built around. All three series only donated a hood, roof panel, sunroof and interior door panels. Everything else is tailored to the M3.

Every detail was pushed and sculpted in the name of weight savings or aerodynamics. Gone were the steel bumpers replaced by lightweight plastics and the sloping windshield for greater aerodynamics. The C-pillar was flattened and widened to draw turbulent air into a new rear wing. Wider arches wrapped around thicker wheels and tires. What remained may have been, at first glance, a slightly modified series of three. But what you had before you on a race track or in a showroom was a brand new car. The M3, a fully prepared racing car that turned out to be road legal. And in 1987 you wanted BMW's pace in taking the M3 to the track to be breakneck in just over a year since they gave the green light to the M3 project.

The first examples began rolling off the line in March 1986. However, BMW's accountants were still losing sleep at night, so out of fear they only released a few into the wild, used as bait to attract people. people to dealerships where BMW would try to sell them more reasonable cars like the five series. His plan worked. They were taken to the dealership, but they were there to buy an M3 because when they saw one in the wild, when they saw what it did in competition on the grueling curves of the Bavarian circuits, it was different from any BMW they knew. had seen before.

Hell, it didn't look like anything on the road. The E30 M3 was not a road version of a racing car. It was the racing car. And you could buy it and drive it. Change that dogleg transmission. Hear the screams of the S14 straight from the showroom. The E30 M3 was not just an uncomfortable sports car, its DNA was still that of an economical, comfortable and versatile BMW Three Series. You could take your wife and kids to dinner on Saturday and then take your M3 to the track on Sunday and you'd win the E30. The M3 was an explosion of engineering, durability and agility.

At first, BMW feared that no one would buy them very quickly, but they began to fear that they would not be able to make enough units to meet the homologation requirements. They needed 5000 examples. They sold 10,000 before the guys at the M factory said nein! no more. We cannot meet the demand. The M3 would sell for years, evolving and defining the legacy of the BMW name for generations. It would catapult the BMW m name into the halls of automotive history. It was almost an accident. They were trying to become a sales leader, but they did it anyway.

BMW had given the public something they didn't even know they wanted. Purring beneath that blue and white emblem was a road car with racing blood, a killing machine full of fire and fury that anyone could tame. And since Willy is 109. When you put the right hands on the controls of a balanced sword, the weapon becomes unstoppable and its thirst for victory. Countless lives were extinguished at the hands of the BF. 109. If you saw one in the sky... You only had one hope of surviving the encounter. You were on the same team. Is no different. It was the air on European circuits in 1987.

You may have arrived at that starting line in your Alfa Romeo with 20 more horses or you may have been looking at the e30 M3 in your Ford Cosworth rearview mirror. I trust his 60 extra horses will be able to keep him there. But you were wrong. You were totally wrong. The humble, underpowered and unassuming BMW m3 would crawl up your spine, grab you with its sharp teeth and spit you out on its way to the podium. His indiscriminate road rage. It didn't really matter who had the controls. The lightweight, naturally aspirated BMW sports car was so easy to drive, so reliable and consistent that it would eventually be at the front of the pack.

On paper, the E30 m3 should have also gone down in history, but on the hot black asphalt of circuits across Europe, history would write the name M3 at the top. It wasn't the most powerful, but it could be driven harder and longer. He achieved a balance that few have ever achieved. M3 drivers had more confidence to push harder to brake later near the apex and accelerate harder to be on the track next to an M3. You would feel like you were in a completely different class. The first year the M3 came out, racing manufacturers around the world took a slap in the face and the M3 took home the trophy in the Australian Touring Car Championship, the European Touring Car Championship, the World Touring Car Championship and, most important, on its own ground.

BMW pushed, Mercedes-Benz sank into the sand and took the lunch money. They were at the top of the podium. In the spotlight was Eric van de Poele, the new DTM champion at the height of his winning streak. A BMW M3 won a race every day and would go on to achieve 1,436 first places throughout its career. Three years, almost 1,500 races in which everyone learned to respect it, making it the most successful touring car that has ever touched a tire on the road. Years later, Japan would unleash a beast as notorious and as dominant as the E30 M3, but the R 32 GT-R would never have as many victories under its belt.

The M3's reign in the 1980s was unlike anything before it. And, unlike anything we'll likely see again. But that's not exactly why we love it so much. We love it because in a way it changed everything. The racing history of the E30 m3 is absolute, and yet today, when talking about the plucky little sports car, it rarely comes to mind. Yes, the e30 M3 was built to compete, with its teeth sharpened by drivers and engineers to defeat the competition and win trophies to appease corporate overlords. And he certainly was excellent at it. But that is not why they are so important and so valuable.

That's not why many consider the E30 M3 to be BMW's

greatest

achievement. His legend is in every car. Helped create. Everything you know and love today is due in large part to BMW's commitment to the M3. It was a road racing car unlike any made before. It was one without compromises. You would no longer have to buy a terrible road racing car. Or a race car that was miserable to drive in traffic. The E30 M3 was the perfect combination of fire and ice, comfort and revenge. It was truly the ultimate driving machine and changed the enthusiast world forever.

He paved the way for every running kid's dream. The Civic Type r and Lancer Evolution WRX STI could be sure to find their audience like the BMW M3 did. Manufacturers now knew that the public wanted to see a race car on the track and drive it home from the dealership. I mean, just look at the legacy he created. Every BMW M car is a monument. Each generation of the M3 is unique, fast and fantastic, and they are all born from that initial idea of ​​making a racing car for the road. The BMW M3 changed a mediocre German car brand from a stuffy luxury automaker to a place you go when your blood is burning with 91 octane when you need the best cars in the world that take no knocks and leave no witnesses.

This was that Archimedean lever, the balanced and delicate, simple and plastic-sheathed weapon that Germany would cut throughout the history of motorsports, leaving in its wake the crushed dreams of its enemies and changing history forever. This was the lever that a Mad Men team in the 1980s made so powerful that they could move the entire world.