The BMW Z3 Coupe Was a Weird Practical Sports Car

This is a 1999 BMW Z3 Coupe, and it's just plain weird. To make this car, BMW took the Z3 convertible roadster, which was not weird, and they added a roof. But instead of creating a coupe, they made a hatchback, which was weird. Sports car up front, practical in back. Today I'm going to review this Z3 Coupe and all of its quirkiness and show you all of its quirks and features. Before I get started, big news, this Z3 Coupe is currently for sale and it's being auctioned live on Cars and Bids. It has a six cylinder engine, a manual transmission and it's certainly weird and it can be yours on Cars and Bids. So once you finish watching this video, click the link in the description below to visit the live auction for this Z3 Coupe where you can bid on it and buy it only on Cars and Bids. All right, time for the many quirks and features of the rather quirky Z3 Coupe, starting with a little overview. So, the Z3, the BMW Z3, came out as a two-seat convertible roadster sports car in 1996, and it debuted to huge fanfare. It was a massive deal. BMW, known for its focused sedans, performance, luxury, but sedans primarily was coming out with a two-seat roadster. And then it was in a James Bond movie. It was a massive sensation. Hard to even explain now because nobody cares that much about the Z4. But back in the day, it was huge. And BMW released the Z3, the Roadster, before all of its competitors. When the Z3 came out, there was no Mercedes SLK. That came later. The Audi TT came later. The Porsche Boxster came later. They were all after the Z3. It was groundbreaking and a big deal. It made sense for them to create a coupe version of the Z3 because there were convertibles and then there were coupe models. Audi had a coupe version of the TT, for example. Of course, Porsche later came out with a coupe version of the Boxster, the Cayman. And in Europe, Alfa Romeo had the Alfa Spider and then later the coupe version, the GTV. It made sense. And so BMW did it. But the weird thing was, even though a coupe version made sense And even though they put a roof on it, On the Z3 Roadster, BMW didn't really make a Z3 Coupe. They made a hatchback with a tailgate. And so let's talk through the quirks and features of the quirkiest part of this car. To get into the cargo area, there's this little keyhole button thing. You push it and then lift up, open the tailgate, and it reveals the cargo area. And I gotta say, this cargo area is really surprisingly practical. It is wide and flat and large. It's a lot bigger than the cargo area you'd expect in the coupe. version of a two-seat roadster, and certainly more than you'd expect in the two-seat roadster. And they legitimately had practicality in mind when creating this cargo area. You can see cargo tie-downs on both sides and in the front for like a net or something to keep your cargo in place while you're driving around. You had a cargo cover, fully retractable cargo cover back here that you can use to cover up your stuff so people wouldn't steal it. You even had a cargo net separated the passenger compartment and the cargo area in case you had some larger item in here you didn't want going into the front, or if you wanted to put a pet in the back of your BMW coupe, you could do that and kind of keep them in place with the cargo net. You also have these little panels in the cargo floor. You can see off to the side, you lift up this leather loop, and there's a small, like, flat panel here where you can put something to keep it in place, and the panel that you've lifted up will sort of keep it staying there. So it won't move around and you have the exact same thing over on the other side. And if you lift up the cargo floor, you even had a toolkit under here, a BMW toolkit that you can use to change a tire or perform various other maintenance all inside the cargo area of your BMW Z3 sports car. And to add even more practicality, because this was a low-performance car, the load floor height is shockingly low, so it's easy to lift stuff, heavy items, into the cargo area. That was no problem. Now, you did retain in the Z3 Coupe only two seats. Despite adding this full roof line and the cargo area, they didn't put extra seats, back seats in this car. It was just two seats and a cargo area, but otherwise, it was a shockingly Practical sports car. And indeed, the Z3 Coupe, despite its hatchbacky appearance, was a sports car. Small, light, rear-wheel drive based on the Z3 Roadster, and it had powerful engines. In fact, there was even a high-performance M version of the Z3 Coupe called simply the Z3 M Coupe. And later versions of that M Coupe carried the same six-cylinder engine that was in the E46 BMW M3 with over 300 horses. horsepower, which was a huge figure in a little car like this. It made this thing move. You had a real hot hatchback at that point. But this is the non-M version, and yet it's still pretty potent. That's because BMW never offered the Z3 base engines on the Z3 Coupe. It was only ever offered with the top-level engine that was in the Z3 that year. So, the Z3 Coupe was sold from 99 to 02, and that meant in 99 and 2000, the Z3 Coupe got a 2.8-liter six-cylinder, this engine, with about 190 horsepower, and in 01 and 02, that was upgraded to a 3-liter six-cylinder with about 230 horsepower. Again, the top-level engine from the Z3, the only one offered here, or you could get an M model. But the drawback of this car, therefore, was the appearance, the look. You see, the Z3 was characterized by its long front hood, which gave it kind of an old school sports car look reminiscent of the BMW 507 and other old roadsters. But They combined that long hood with the flat roof of a hatchback instead of the sweeping curve that a coupe might have with sort of a teardrop shape. And so the overall proportions are a bit unusual. So unusual, in fact, that most enthusiasts refer to this car as the clown shoe because that's what it looks like. The long front of a clown shoe and then it goes up and back. The heel part of the shoe, it really looks like a clown shoe. Now, that was originally kind of a derisive name for this car to talk about the fact that it was ugly. But in recent years, there's been a lot of acceptance of the clown shoe and its uniqueness in the BMW world and the car world in general. And so now, enthusiasts and even owners of this car kind of lovingly refer to it as the clown shoe. And indeed, while the overall existence of this car was certainly quirky, there are quite a few other quirks and features worth discussing. We will start on the side with a very interesting aspect of this car. It doesn't really have fenders. Instead, the hood panel is massive and kind of rolls over the side of the car and even creates the wheel arches. You can see when the hood is up, it's really big and there's no separate panels for the fenders. Now, when the hood is down, you can see this car has side gills and And an additional BMW logo on the side. In fact, they have that on both sides, driver and passenger. Like I mentioned, the Z3 was BMW blazing a new territory. It wasn't something they usually did, and they really wanted people to identify it as a BMW, and so you had four BMW badges, front and rear, and both sides. Interestingly, this car also has a side marker turn signal required by European regulations, but they've mounted it below the side gill. and the BMW logo, and that's because all that stuff would come up with the giant hood panel. The side turn signal had to be on a non-moving piece of bodywork, so they put it a little bit lower. Kind of an odd place, but that's what they had to do to comply with regulations. And the quirks continue when you climb inside. Starting with the door sill, which you can see just says the word coupe. Not BMW coupe, not Z3 coupe, just coupe. That's all they wanted to say to emphasize the specialness of this body style. Now, interestingly, BMW insisted on calling this car a coupe, even though it was plainly, obviously a hatchback. They didn't want to say it was a Z3 hatchback. That would have been as sexy. This is the coupe. That just happens to have a hatchback and a cargo area. Now, the other thing I like, when you open the door, you can see the VIN number. And here's a little bit of interesting VIN geek information for you. All BMW models built in Germany, which is most of them, the VIN number starts with W, which is the International VIN Code for Germany. And then BMWs are either B, A. For regular BMWs or BS for M cars, the sport BMWs. So they all start with WBA or WBS when they're built in Germany. But the Z3 was the first BMW built in the United States in South Carolina. And U.S. VINs generally start with numbers. And so, breaking tradition, BMW decided to do something very special that only the most Particular fastidious car enthusiast geeks would really appreciate. They chose the number four to start the VIN, and the next two letters instead of B-A or B-S were U-S. And so all early BMW Z3 VINs started with four U-S. For the U.S. market, for the U.S., because it was the first car they had built in the U.S. That was a special little BMW nod to building this car in America, which I've always found was a wonderful little thing that almost nobody has ever noticed or talked about. But I'm sure there were meetings in Germany where they had this clever idea to have the four U.S. VIN code on their first U.S.-made cars. Anyway, climbing inside to go over the other quirks and features in here, quite a few of them actually, although the interior looks at first glance to be very Focused and professional and simple like a German car interior would. There's some interesting stuff going on here. Starting with the seats. You don't have your typical BMW seats. These are sportier seats with kind of more support like you would find in a sports car and not in a typical BMW sedan from this era. This car also has a sunroof, which obviously was different from the regular Z3 Roadster. And their implementation was unusual. To open the sunroof, they just put a window switch on the ceiling. And see, they mounted it sideways, not in the direction that the sunroof actually opens, but that's what they've done and that's how you open the sunroof in the Z3 Coupe. Another interesting quirk is turning on the headlights, which is done over to the left of the steering wheel with this round silver thing. Interestingly, this is not a dial to turn on the headlights. It's old school. You pull it out once for parking lights and then once more for the full headlights all the way out. The really odd thing is not the operation, but the fact that it's silver, which is weird because basically nothing else in this interior is. The door handles, the very tip of the parking brake, but that's it. There's no real silver in here except... Strangely enough, for the headlight control. And let's talk storage, because this car is all about practicality. Between the seat backs, you can see this storage compartment, which is actually fairly large. Moving down, you also have another storage compartment, which is small. And then in between the seats, you have two storage compartments, a large one and a small one, once again. A lot of storage in here, and of course, all of that is in addition to your usual glove box and door panel storage in this car. Another thing I love about this interior, and BMW interiors from this era, the mid to late 90s and early 2000s, is just the feel of some of the buttons and switches in here. They are very high-quality feeling. When you press them, they have a very nice weight to them, and it just feels so distinctly BMW and wonderful. I wish BMW and other manufacturers would do this today. Just the way these switches felt, you were pushing something, and it really felt like It felt like you were doing something important. That was especially true in my view of the turn signal. I have always loved the feel of the turn signal stalk in BMWs from this era. I love how it feels when you put it on. Oh, it is just such a wonderful tactile sensation. They got the exact forces just perfect, even though it's something only as simple and basic as a turn signal stalk. And by the way, the turn signal stalk has a little hidden function that a lot of people don't realize. You take a look in the center control stack, and you can see at the bottom there is a clock. It tells the time. If you press the end of the turn signal stalk, this little screen with the clock will actually cycle through and display various other pieces of information, like your average fuel economy or your fuel range to empty or your average speed, various different things located in here. Now, interestingly, if you're driving along and you have this on, say, your average fuel economy, and if you want to see the clock, Or if the passenger wants to see the clock, all you gotta do is just press the clock button and you can see the clock pulls up. But interestingly, pressing the clock button does not change what's on that screen. It only pulls up the clock if you're not on the clock. Otherwise, you can only change that screen by pressing the end of the turn signal stalk. It's a privilege reserved only for the driver. You might also be wondering what the SR button is here. That stands for set or reset, referring to like the average speed. If you wanna fully reset that, you just press and hold down. One other interesting thing, in the gauge cluster, when you first turn on the car, you see this little display with a bunch of green dots, and then there's also yellow and red. That will tell you how long you have until your next oil service or oil change in this car. When you turn on the car, if it's all green, that means you just did the oil service and you have a long time to go. But as you start driving and adding miles, those green dots start disappearing, disappearing, disappearing. Eventually, it turns yellow and then red, and that means it's time for a new oil change. This car doesn't have, like, a modern infotainment system to tell you that stuff, but that was sort of a precursor to that, a little green, yellow, red. When you started up the car in the gauge cluster. And finally, our last interesting quirk of this car is, to me, how relatively affordable and attainable these cars are, considering how interesting and quirky and special they are and how few were produced. So, a regular Z3 coupe like this one is pretty easy to find in the $12,000 to $20,000 range, depending on mileage and condition, which is really not that crazy for kind of a special low-volume, unusual BMW. The early Z3 M Coupe models with the smaller high-performance engine are not that much more expensive, maybe $15,000, $20,000 up to $30,000. They're really not big money, even though they're the high-performance version of this rare car. Now, the later M Coupe models with the bigger powertrain from the E46 M3 I mentioned before, those cost money. Those can get really pricey, especially in unusual colors or with low miles. They can tap on the $100,000 door or quite close. But the early cars, the early M coupes or a regular Z3 coupe is a shockingly cheap way into a rare BMW. And indeed, this was a rare BMW. Less than 18,000 of these were made for the entire world, including all Z3 and M models. This was just a really special rare car and kind of an icon in the car enthusiast world. Everybody knows the clown shoe BMW Z3, A regular version like this, or an M model. But, I'm especially curious about how it drives. I've never driven a clown shoe before, and I'm curious to get it out on the road and see what it's like. So let's do it. All right, driving the BMW Z3 Coupe. I have never driven one of these cars before. I have driven regular Z3s a bunch of times. i have never driven a z3 coupe and obviously i've always wanted to review a z3 m coupe on my channel but i've been waiting for an s54 unmodified late production with the best engine, the S54 six cylinder that we're seeing on the site, I I I've been waiting for that and you know it's got to be in Southern California, I figured I might as well give it a shot. Start with the the entry level one and we'll move on to the M Coupe when it happens. Now the Z3 has always kind of been Um, there's been sort of two schools of thought about it. One is, hey, this is a BMW that's also a two-seat rear-wheel-drive roadster with a manual transmission, a lot of them. That's a cool car. But then there's also this sort of like, oh, it's this like... Poser car that just kind of looks cool, but really it's, you know, it's a little convertible. It's not exciting or passionate or fast, you know, like it should be. It's kind of like a lesser car. I've always kind of been more in the former camp. A lot of car enthusiasts or manly men... I don't like little roadsters, but actually the Z3 has always been a fun car to drive. And I think it's kind of BMW's version of the Miata. It's a little bit heavier, it's obviously a little bit nicer, a little more expensive even now, and more expensive to own, but it's surprisingly tossable, surprisingly nice, especially if you get the larger powertrains like this Z3 Coupe has. And my first impression driving this car, even just down a few blocks, is that it feels a lot like a Z3, which is to say that it's little. It's not a big deal. The whole car seems very contained in this little space. You have a good transmission in this car, just like the regular Z3 does and other BMWs that use this powertrain. You have a nice clutch. It's not too springy like a lot of BMW clutches. The manual transmission's good. The shift lever feels nice, notches right into gear. Throws aren't too long. It's a little vague, but a little lighter than I would want. But generally, it's pretty good. All right, giving it some gas here. That's quick. It's quick. This car does not have an enormous amount of power, but it is not an enormous amount of car. Wow. It actually legitimately feels quite fast. I'm surprised because this is the smallest powertrain that went into the Z3 Coupe, but that's the thing about the Z3 in general. It actually was a little car. And so if you skip the base little four-cylinder, which was actually an okay engine for the Z3, if you skip the base little four-cylinder, you got a pretty decent package considering that the car was not all that big. And it was kind of fun to throw around and light and lively, and that's exactly the case with this car. It is light and lively and fun. Color me really surprised by exactly how fast this is. This feels a lot faster than I was expecting. Part of it is you're low, you're close to the road, it sounds fast, but it also just is a pretty quick car. It's clearly, the engine is also just excellent in the sense that it's got like a good potent feel to it. Obviously it's not turbocharged, so you don't have any annoying turbo lag. It feels nice. It just feels like, even in fifth, the car is pulling more than I expected it to at relatively high speeds. This is cool. this is a cool car it's also reasonably well put together a lot of um german cars from the 90s sort of suffered from this kind of crappy plastic world uh but by the late 90s they had realized their their mistakes there they kind of started in the 80s doing that and by the late 90s they realized that was something they had to get away from they had to make better materials and bmw especially really did that with the cars like the e39 the e38 the interiors got better than those earlier BMWs, and that's true here too. And of course, the nice thing about the Z3 Coupe and all Z3 models is they handle well. Steering is sharp. The initial turn-in is a little delayed, but once you get turning, it is a sharp steering car, surprisingly so. That's one of its cool benefits. Woohoo! It goes around corners well, very predictable, very flat. It's a little car, little rear-wheel drive, tiny roadster-y car, and so that's what it's good for. The steering is maybe a little lighter than what I would want, I don't want. It's generally fine and it's very predictable and the car is easy to throw around and just have fun with. It's a neat car. I'm impressed with it. I think it's very exciting and I'm surprised how enjoyable it is to drive and especially surprised how fast it is, It is. considering this isn't the M version or even the most powerful six-cylinder version they made. But it carries on the tradition of the Z3 but adds a little quirk and a little practicality. And so that's the BMW Z3 Coupe. This is such an unusual car, and buyers didn't seem to know what to make of it either, which is why it's exceptionally rare. But if you're into quirky and fun cars, this is certainly both, and you can get this Z3 Coupe on Cars and Bids. Anyway, now it's time to give this car a Doug score. And the Doug score is here, 49 out of 100, which places the Z3 Coupe here against some sort of similar cars, although nothing is really that similar to this weirdo BMW. The Z3 Coupe has a low weekend score compared to these rivals. I think it loses a little thrill in the transition from the roadster to the coupe, but it picks up points in the daily categories, which makes sense. Really, this car is a bit of an oddball conundrum, combining sports car with practical hatchback, which is a big part of the reason why it's notable.