Recently, my wife Lea and I just acquired a 2001 BMW E46 M3. This has been forever Lea’s dream car and I have always been a fond BMW fan.
Back around 1999-2000 before I had FD’s, I owned an ’88 E30 M3 that I loved, truly a BMW motorsport classic. So we decided to give up our trusty S14 240sx that we had for over 6 years and move on to something a bit more mature and classy.
Soon after we got the M3, I find out that there was going to be a local Hot Import Night Drift Demo in Pleasanton, CA the week after the Sonoma Formula D event. I was initially going to use my FD to demo with, but my car needed to go back down to Gardena, CA to Garage Boso to get race prepped and retuned for more power for the final Irwindale round next month. So I decided to drift our new M3 that we just got at the demo.
To prepare for the event, I hit up KW Suspension for their Clubsport coilovers that features separately adjustable compression and rebound external reservoir shocks and front camber plates. Got some Falken RT-615 tires to burn up and added a set of H&R spacers all around to get that “Hella Flush” wheel fitment. I then had the car aligned at Mach III in San Francisco and put some graphics on to promote some of my sponsors from Graphtech Graphics in Daly City, CA.
When I got to the venue at HIN, there was a film crew from Speed Channel making a show on Hot Import Nights that was waiting to interview me and to get some drift footage. They asked me to explain about some drifting techniques and the car itself. I told them that I never drifted an E46 M3 before so I had no idea how it would drift, so we’ll see how it goes. I wasn’t even sure if the suspension was even setup properly. But I figured it should be fine, so I just went for it.
To my surprise, the M3 drifted awesome! The car was very predictable and stable. A little bit heavy in full stock street trim, but was still able to transition smoothly and could carry some pretty decent angle with aggressive throttle input. The stock power was decent for the small lot we had to work with. The traction control and ABS surprisingly did not interfere as long as the DSC button was disengaged.
The stock LSD was even able to spin both tires okay. The e-brake was able to lock the rear tires up fine in drift, which allowed me to skim the k-walls and put on a show for the crowd.
Overall I was very pleased with how the car drifted. With some lightening and some added power, this chassis can be a pretty good competition drift car. Hmmm… tempting, but don’t think the wifey will appreciate me turning another street car into a track whore. Maybe after my current S-Chassis drift project…
www.kw-suspension.com
www.falkentire.com
www.hellaflush.com
www.machiii.net
www.gtstickers.com