Selling my Porsche for this E92 BMW M3?

This is a BMW E92 M3 and in this video I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about this car. Also I'm going to point out some of the things you need to look out for if you're thinking about buying one, including one particular thing that if it goes wrong it's going to cost you a lot of money. I'm also going to tell you about simple upgrades you can make to make it peak M3 without altering the character too much. Now I'm actually thinking about selling my Porsche 911 996 and getting one of these instead and we'll find out if I'm actually going to do that at the end of the video. Let's start this video with a quick history lesson. So the first M3 was the E30 that had a four-cylinder engine. Then there was the E36 which had a six-cylinder engine. Then the E46 also had a six-cylinder engine. However in 2007 BMW launched this the E92 which had an eight-cylinder engine. Now it stayed in production until 2013. As for the pricing start from around £50,000 then you can pick one up now from £12,000. That'll get you a bit of a tatty one. If you want a good one you're looking around £20,000 and if you are thinking about buying one of these cars you need to get its history checked. You don't want to be buying a car which has outstanding finance or was written off or has got various problems and you can check the history of a car using CarVertical. So all you have to do is just input the details of the car to get the report back and I've done it for this particular car and the good news is it's all clean. That's not the case with all cars. Check out this 4 Series. There's some pictures of it here looks really nice. However one of the great things about CarVertical is that you can get pictures of if there's been damage to the car. So if you go back in time with this 4 Series you can see that actually look it was involved in an accident and here's pictures of what was done to it. See the airbags have gone off, it's damaged on the outside, bit of a mess on the inside. Would you want to buy this car if you knew that it once looked like that? I mean you'd never know looking at the current photos of it but that's all a bit scary. So if you want to check out a car's history then simply follow the link in the description or my pinned comment to CarVertical and if you use my discount code then you can save some money on a report. Definitely go check it out. The heart of the E92 M3 is of course its S65 4 litre naturally aspirated V8 engine. It's basically the same engine as in the E60 M5 only with two less cylinders. That means it has the same problems as that engine and more on that later. As standard this car has 420 horsepower and 400 newton meters of torque. Obviously this one isn't quite standard. You've probably noticed this rather beautiful carbon fibre intake system from Eventuri. You see this car has been lent to me by Imran from Evolve Automotive and for more information on Evolve Automotive I'll put a link to their channel in the description. If you're thinking about getting your M3 upgraded you want to check out Evolve. This has got this intake system plus a remapped ECU and a full exhaust system and the result is more power. 460 horsepower to be precise so the 0-60 time on this car should be quicker than the standard car's claimed 4.8 seconds. It should also sound better as well shouldn't it? Now let's talk about the design of the car. Really the upgrades are the standard 3 Series Coupe. It's just M3 badging and a sportier rear bumper with this cutout section here and of course those quad tailpipes. Here at the side you get some sporty side skirts, M specific door mirrors which aren't quite as fistable as the very latest M3s. There's some fake vents here. Is this where it all started? Anyway you get a carbon fibre roof as standard. Really nice that and 18-inch alloy wheels though these are the upgraded 19s. Now as well as this coupe version of this generation of M3 you could also get a saloon and a convertible. Here at the front you've got a more aggressive front bumper and this one is fitted with some aftermarket carbon fibre additions which actually look really nice. Another feature of the M3 is the big bulging bonnet which goes with the wider wheel arches at the front and back and some vents in the bonnet as well. It is a mean looking car. Now it was facelifted in 2010 but really the facelift was very minor. However towards the end of the car's life you get some special editions like this one here. So it's a limited edition model. I think there's only like about 50 sold in the UK. It's a very very rare car though it's not quite as desirable as the GTS which is pretty much a racing car for the road version of this generation of M3 with a roll cage, a massive wing and an uprated engine. You can get this car with either a six-speed manual or a seven-speed dual clutch automatic which is what this car has and if you have this auto you can change the ferocity of the shifts. Obviously this is connected to the rear wheels. This generation of BMW M3 was rear wheel drive only and it did have a limited slip differential which was variable. The car just took care of that but it does make this car easy to slide. The M3 has uprated brakes over the standard 3 series so you've got larger ventilated discs at the front and the rear and beefier calipers though they are only single piston calipers. The M3 also gets uprated suspension so stiffer springs, revised dampers, beefier anti-roll bars. Though in 2010 a competition version was offered which had lowered suspension by 10 millimetres over the standard M3 and also different settings for the springs and the dampers that improved the handling quite a bit. Also it came as standard with the otherwise optional adaptive dampers. This particular car has actually been uprated by Volvo Automotive with Bilstein adaptive coilovers and so it's gonna be interesting to see how this feels out on the road. Here on the inside I don't think this cabin feels too dated considering it's over 10 years old. Quality is generally pretty nice, it's got a good sporty feel to it, the layout is clear you do have an old iDrive system which you can control only through a swivel wheel but that feels really nice and expensive actually. As for the M3 itself it gets upgraded dash trim so this carbon fibre effect here. You also have an M Sport steering wheel which is quite chunky but not overly so, not like the very latest M cars. Got some M badging on it there, you've got the blue and red stitching as well. These aren't the original paddles, the original paddles weren't as nice as these ones, these are really lovely. You've got an M gear selector down here, you've got some red stitching on the manual handbrake and some more red stitching here and here. Got some body-hugging electric M Sport seats and some M Sport dials and then on the sills you've got some M badging. It's nice, it's familiar. I remember reviewing this car back in the day. Now if you're thinking about buying one of these cars there's a few things to watch out for. The first is the fact the rear brake calipers can seize, so check for that. Also have a look at the tyre wear, make sure that it's not uneven because it could show that the geometry is out or worse still the car's been crashed. Though it should be picked up hopefully if you do that history check on car vertical. Another thing that you want to think about with this car is the suspension. After time it's going to start wearing out and you're probably going to need to replace the bushings. When you go for a test drive just listen out for any knocks, bangs or squeaks when you go over bumps. If you're buying the manual version of this car obviously you want to check out the condition of the clutch. If you get in the automatic it's generally pretty tough, however if the car's done over 60,000 miles it's probably worth having a transmission oil change. While you're having that done you may as well have the plastic sump replaced as well because it can get a little bit brittle over time and start to leak. The big thing to watch out for though on this generation of M3 is rod bearing failure and if it happens to your car it's very very expensive because it writes off the car's crankshaft. You see the bearings which connect the connecting rods from the pistons to the crankshaft can wear and then they seize onto the crankshaft and write it off. Brilliant! Now these rod bearings were from a 62,000 mile car. Look worn out! So the thing to do is if you're buying one of these things is to have the rod bearings replaced just as a preventative measure as it could save you a lot of money in the long run and if you want to get that done to your car you should just contact Evolve and they'll do the job for you. I've got a link in the description. Okay let's see what this M3 is like to drive. So I'm going to press the power button because we want all the power and I'm leaving the dampers in the softest setting because this road is a bit bumpy. Oh my god what a noise! That carbon fibre air intake! That sounds epic! Not gonna lie that sounds better than my Porsche 911. It doesn't produce peak torque until around 3,900 rpm so low down you wouldn't know how fast it is but it builds and it revs to 8,000! It's just nuts! I've only played with half the revs! What an engine! Gear shift is really really quick. There's a bit of a delay in the response in terms of changing down a gear but once it's changing it's a quick change. There we go listen to that. Oh that's so nice! Right straight bit of road. Let's not launch it as such but just do a quick pull away. Struggling for traction. All the revs. All the... whoa! Whoa! All I've done so far is talk about the engine haven't I? There's more to this car than the engine. The chassis is pretty lovely as well. I like the steering. Hydraulic not electric like the latest M3 so the feel is pretty decent and I quite like the actual steering rate. It just feels a perfect balance. Maybe this was the time when they really had the balance between responsiveness of steering and the feel just about right. It's quite interesting comparing this to the M3 that I daily. It feels like a smaller car. It's not actually that much lighter but it's just a little bit more agile. However it doesn't feel quite as planted. Maybe that's because it's not quite so wide. The suspension as well. I'm picking up bits in the road the bits of imperfections but it's not bad. The ride's actually fairly decent but then it has been fully overhauled the suspension. Do you know I'm going to try it in sports mode. Well blimey heck! Sometimes with sports modes on suspension you don't notice a difference. With this you absolutely 100% do. Dial that back to comfort mode because that was just a little bit too bumpy. Great for the track because it keeps the body completely flat. Though to be fair even in comfort setting there's hardly any lean which means you can just trust the car going through the corners and it just feels nice and stable. The brakes are fine. They're not really stand out. They're fairly consistent. They're not grabby. You don't have to like really dive into them to get them to stop. Plenty of performance for the road at least. I hear that on the track they do start to fade after a while. If you get one of these cars definitely upgrade the brakes especially if you're taking it on track. Regardless of whether you're going to track this car get this air intake because the noise. Oh it's so good. Oh I love it. I love the throttle response as well. Naturally aspirated for the win I'm telling you. It doesn't have the slug of torque of my turbo charged M3 but that throttle response and that noise and all those revs. Oh oh you can't get bored of that. Wow. So then what do I think of the E92 M3? It's a lovely car. Fabulous engine. Handles really well especially this car with all the upgrades. Would I swap my Porsche 911 996 for one though? Oh it's a tough one. This is quicker. A bit sharper but overall I still prefer my Porsche. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did give it a like. If you're thinking about buying a used car make sure you check out its history with Car Vertical. Link is in the description or in my pinned comment and don't forget to use my discount code to save yourself some cash.