BMW Z3M Coupé: Zee Germans are coming!! (This might be a teeny-tiny bit long)

320-odd horses coming together at precisely the right time screaming “Neigh neigh, motherfu*er!” at the diesel Renault behind you with a strong* German accent just as you pull away, all in the name of a big, silly smile and a few corresponding giddy giggles.

This is a car my father owned for a little while (the lucky son of… no! I’m not envious). As this was a euro spec car, I won’t be going into details about the atrophied version that the North American market got, although I suspect what I say of everything but the powertrain is applicable to these models as well. I got to drive it a fair few times when I was home, here is what I think of it.

One of the first things you notice about the car is how small it is (the perfect size really) and how unique it is design wise. Although it looks much better in the flesh, the figure is funny, and there is some chrome here and there (this is the late 90s remember, chrome was already “played out” by the mid-late 70s). It clearly has the long-nose-short-tail trademark shape of a roadster, yet it has a roof, with an abrupt drop at the end. Somehow, it doesn’t seem quite right at first, like someone just put a longer nose on a hatchback - which is essentially what it is, a long nosed hatchback - and called it a day.
But then, as you walk around it, you notice there isn’t a single panel on it, it’s all a collection of aggressive curves. I’m particularly fond of the rear 3/4 view. The rear arches are wide, purposefully wrapping around the deep-dished alloys (7.62cm deep to be precise, or 3 inches) marking the significantly widened track, not unlike a bespoke suit around well-defined shoulders. The curve blends in nicely and progressively down the side of the car only to swell up again around the front wheels. Very sensual indeed. Perhaps it looks more like a sophisticated woman in a cocktail dress than a nightclub bouncer in a suit that’s slightly too tight…
Whether you like it or not doesn’t seem to be the point here, it’s a car you can’t ignore. You absolutely have to have an opinion about its cartoon-like looks.

The front of the car is a bit more aggressive than the other Z3s. If you face it at a slight angle, you can see a stacking effect: the car seems to widen and gain more presence, more muscle, as you look father back along the sides.
Speaking of presence, the rear has metric tonnes of it. Again the rear arches give a strong, butch look and the 4 chromed exhaust tips finish it off spectacularly.

The more you look at it, the more you think “Hmm… I see what they’ve done here, the clever bast**ds!”. They’ve tried to make a manly version of a convertible-based coupé, and they’ve succeeded.

However, as you open the door, you’re not greeted as much as you’re taken aback by the interior. Oh dear…
I feel I should mention that it’s not actually that bad of an interior: you still get comfortable (and heated!) leather bucket seats, lots of dials, nice feeling switches… However, you’d expect more from BMW. The materials aren’t quite as nice as they could be; there are acres of that hard, easily chipped painted plastic on the centre console and most of the touch points are covered in cheap fake leather (grab handles for instance). The fitting of certain items is frankly shocking - some exterior panel gaps are actually tighter. And if you have a look around the classifieds, you’ll see loads with the horrid, horrid wood trim or the black and red/orange leather interior, or worse: both.

It’s as though they spent an abundant amount of time making it look badass and manly from the outside (in an effort, I suspect, to compensate for the rather feminine looks of the drop top, even in its M version), without bothering to fix the interior - which was unanimously pointed out as a real let down by all the road tests at the time. As a result, BMW is providing you with an interior on par with just about any mid-level Japanese car from the 90s. It’s really a disappointing place to be, especially considering a brand new one would have set you back over £40.000!

Although in it’s defence, the interior is actually quite well designed and thought out. I personally like the symmetrical design, split by the centre stack. Everything falls easily to hand and it’s very driver focused. It’s just the materials and the fit that let it down; and ultimately, that let you down. It really is a shame, because every time you go over a tiny imperfection in the road, it shakes and rattles and creaks, taking your mind off how good of a drive it is. You find yourself wondering “Why, oh why, didn’t they fix it when they had the chance…”.

The boot in the coupé versions also seems to be quite large, although it’ll only fit items you ‘d be able to have as cabin luggage on an airplane. It’ll fit many of them, but a suitcase you’d have to check in to fly will not make it inside. For everyday things, it’s much more convenient than in the roadster, but don’t expect people to ask you to help them to move.

Be that as it may, the interior is the same as any other Z3 (give or take an illuminated gear knob, sportier seats and clock faces). And since you’ll get the same build quality in all of them you might as well get the best one, and trust me, the redeeming factors that M badge provides are quite spectacular.

Once you turn the key, the engine emerges from its dormant state and immediately your qualms about the interior start to fade away.

So what is the famous S50B32 like then? The first thing that strikes you is how smooth it is. There isn’t a single parasitic vibration: if not for the sound coming from the back, you wouldn’t be able to tell it was on.
I was under the impression that it was lacking in the torque (or “twisty force” as I like to call it) department in the low bits of the rev range, but I was happily surprised when I found it had just enough to move about in city traffic, and give itself enough inertia to reach 3.500rpm, when it really starts to get going. “Do not worry Herr, our complex calculations tell us it has precisely the right amount of torque”, the engineers must have told their boss. It’s nothing outstanding, but it’s much better than I was led to believe.

So far, minor styling tweaks aside, everything you get from the Z3 M can be had with any 6-cylinder Z3. Smooth engine, disappointing interior, muscular rear end… We’ve been sticking to the “Z3” part of the badge, if you will. At this point we enter the realm under the rule of the “M” bit of the chromed initials stamped on the rear hatch. And the front wings. And just about anywhere you care to look.

So what is it like now? When you get the power on, the independent throttle bodies open wider - and so does your smile, the induction noise is simply intoxicating; if you manage to hear it over the gloriously raspy and metallic exhaust note (the only thing that cover the creaks of the interior, incidentally). The response is instant and tight. Its power doesn’t seem to die out anywhere: every 100rpm, you get more power and more noise than you did at the previous 100rpm. It feels so strong that you never get the sense of where the redline is, you get the feeling it could rev to over 15.000rpm, and it wouldn’t mind.

Keep pushing the pedal further, and the car becomes like a drunk college student on a night out: it keeps wanting more and more until the redline comes and it takes a short but needed “bathroom break to catch my breath, bruh” as you push the tough, mechanical lever into the next gear in an endeavour to continue your voyage towards the horizon with all the purpose you can find in the muscles below your elbow.

But you never get afraid of it; it’s never violent or brutal. It reacts so perfectly to your right foot that it feels like your toes are directly connected to the throttle bodies, like there is nothing between you and the 6 independent pipes that let air into this masterpiece of an engine. Like an old faithful family dog, you trust it and it never surprises you or aggressively barks at your children - although it will bark at the mailman, like it has for the past 10 years. You’re used to it the minute you touch the throttle. Total control.
It’s every bit as good as it’s reputation entails. It’s incredibly linear, smooth and freakishly addictive. Quite how they managed to make the S54B32 even better is beyond me. Will someone kindly lend me his (or her) E46 M3 so I can find out?

When you really start to get involved in the drive, the car becomes crisp, vivid, engaging and hairy chested; a machine built by drivers, for drivers. It’s as though it acknowledges your desire for more and it gives it to you in copious amounts of feel, weight and stability. It requires your attention all the time, like a five year old. A docile child who trusts you and obeys your every command, yet has enough strength to pump more iron than your uncle’s semi professional boxing drinking buddy, Mickey. Every control inside the cabin is hard, tough, and stubborn; it requires an actual input, a deliberate movement (just how I like it). You cannot drive it nonchalantly; you have to mean it when you accelerate, turn, brake, shift… It’s actual driving like we don’t get anymore these days.

The throttle pedal is especially heavy, compared to “lesser” Z3s. It gets harder to push as you go along: a product of the it’s assembly itself, the intimidating and omnipresent raspy, metallic growl, as well as the acceleration fighting your foot’s pressure on the brushed aluminium cover plate of said pedal.
The car shakes, it resonates in unison with the glorious sound along every bone in your skeleton and it only gets more exhilarating the faster you go. It creates conflict in your mind: your conscience begs you to stop but every fibre in your body ignores your inside voice, and implores you to continue until you reach what I like to refer to as “motorised climax” - that uncontrollable light headedness and feeling of weightlessness that makes you giggle like a school girl when you finally step off the loud pedal, looking at your passenger to see if it was as intense for him/her as it was for you, with the popping and crackling overrun in the background.

The clutch is nicely weighted too, changing gear makes you feel like a man and pushing the brake pedal against the bulkhead leaves you feeling like you could this-is-Sparta-kick Sylvester Stallone into Arnold Schwarzenegger, and topple both as the latter tries to catch his over muscular pal.

The brakes feel solid, very German. The pedal has a short throw, and there is no slack in it at all. You do have to press it hard to squeeze the steel disc between those meaty, hardwearing pads though. But when you do, instantaneously, it gives great feedback, and allows you to modulate very easily between a nice, gentle coasting and an appropriate response to you’re passenger’s “Holy sht, dude! Sht, we’re gonna hit that Prius at the lights!”.
Much like the engine, there is lots of power should you want it, but you know exactly how much you’ll need just as you lay the ball of your foot on the pedal. The brakes inspire control and confidence.

In fact, the whole chassis does. The keyword here is whole. It’s very well balanced, there is no under-steer worth noting - i.e. some is there, but new tires and minor adjustment to the suspension will solve that. It has a tendency to over-steer however. Forgive me; I must now go into car-bore mode to explain why. You see there is an engineering reason as to why it behaves in such a fashion.
The earlier Z3M’s had the S50B32 engine, like the one in Alex’s E36 M3, but they had the E30 generation rear end - which is the spec of the one I drove. Later Z3M’s, had the S54B32 - the E46 M3 engine like Adnan’s, although slightly less powerful because of the exhaust system - which had a more planted backside. Those later cars are extraordinarily rare and very expensive in comparison.
As a result of the rather under achieving rear end (it was never intended to handle such amounts of power), the early cars are very twitchy, especially in damp conditions. Exiting 2nd and 3rd gear corners sometimes makes your life flash before your eyes if you’re not careful the first few times you drive it. I’m told the later cars are a bit more manageable what with their more up to date rear end and lighter controls, but RWD and roughly 325hp with no electronic assistance still keeps you well awake.
That’s right, there is no traction control in the Z3M (only the US models had it), which is odd because every other “non-M” Z3 had it as standard, from the 1.9L to the 3.0L variants… I guess they were expecting drivers of the M version to either know what they were doing, or simply not care.

A key aspect of the car’s liveliness is the suspension, which makes the car feel solid, planted and stable. It’s quite harsh, and it can shake you - as well as the interior - quite a bit on bumpier roads. On said bumpy roads, you find yourself wondering why they had to fit suspension this hard, surely the coupé shape made it stiff enough. But then a corner comes up, and you understand why and forgive it all. The balance, the precision… it’s all worth it.

While it may not be the fastest or most exotic car from the 90s, it’s without a doubt one of the most fun and exciting machines I’ve driven so far. And despite it’s faults, it left me longing for more of it. I became addicted to how it gathers speed, to the way everything seemed to gain weight and feel the more you asked of it, how every single one of your inputs had to be deliberate.
Heel-toeing your way into 2nd and what usually follows such a dance is especially rewarding. Rolling off the brakes slightly too late as you feed the vast but accurate nose towards the apex of an open left hander, and jamming the throttle, on purpose, too early and way to harshly only so you can catch it slide and feel how neutral, predictable, precise and exquisite the chassis is.

That’s its most impressive trait: it doesn’t draw you in with its performance - although it is substantial. It’s its weirdness that attracts you: at first it’s the shape, then the driving position. You come for the looks and stay for the drive. You end up loving it in spite of it’s poor cabin quality and shaky ride because of how alive it makes you feel, because of how balanced it is, because of it’s ability to shake your evil side awake and render you powerless in the face of it’s hunger for more helpings of …everything.

The prices are rising by the minute and the coupés command a premium, so now’s the time to buy, these are going to get 911 shades of crazy very soon. Especially if you’re in your mid 40s (is anyone actually in their 40s on CT? genuine question)! If, however, you are too young to have your inevitable mid-life crisis, you can still tell the missus it’s an investment, and that you’ll sell it for double when the children go to university.

It’s a car you want to drive with some great classic rock tracks blasting through the stereo. Home Sweet Home by Motley Crüe blends in perfectly with the CO2 blowing stainless quartet but anything with marked rhythm and powerful lyrics will be just as nice a choice. And yes, provided it has enough fuel in it, it will power chord shake you aaaaaaaaaaall niiiiiiiiiiight lowwwwwwng.

I’m getting off topic here, back to controlled explosions in aluminium chambers. This car is the perfect example of a useless machine: it serves no purpose; there is no actual need for a car such as this one. It creates that need deep, so deep, in you. And it doesn’t give a damn that it’s useless, even better; it shamelessly shouts about it to everyone around, converting more people to the cult of the clown-shoe as it snarls past.

If anyone asks for me, I’ll be neck deep in classifieds, listening to hopelessly romantic and sad power ballads about impossible love stories.

Did I miss anything? Do you have any suggestions on how I can make these articles better? Do you have any questions about the car itself? Post a comment below, I’ll be sure to read it, answer your questions and take your advice into consideration: I’m writing this for you guys; feedback is what allows me to improve :)