Militant-Grunt

http://www.caranddriver.com/previews...08-bmw-m3.html


I don't buy the www.autocar.co.uk crap, I honestly DOUBT BMW would mess up on their best car, they have done incredibly with the E30, E36 and E46 M3's. They surely are keeping to the same recipe.

Everyone reserve their judgement until Road and Track, Car and Driver and Top Gear have their way with the new M3.

Cylinder Head

iTrader: (1)

+10000000

People are piling on to a car that hasn't even been released yet. Stop the speculation and the bench racing.

MercedesFTW

Should be a fun year when they all come out and play!

termigni

agree 100%. M3 is BMW's best car.

ultraseven

C and D practically sleeps with BMW execs, so I will reserve any judgement until I drive them myself.

QQQ

+1

And don't underrate the C63... critics are surprised at how AMG transforms and launches a serious car to close the gap with M3 in handling.

TopGun32

M3 will be a all around sports car .. not a sports sedan like the C63

I still like the C63 over the M3 as my daily driver and I have 2 kids. If I was single, it would not be a question.. M3 all the way.

Murtaza

M3 Sedan



It looks like **** though, i'd take the C63 over it anyday...

TA-9FF

+100000000000

BMW may have set the benchmark, but AMG is always working towards closing the gap.

ash-c32

Car and Driver and Road and Track are the c**p from both presentation and content (small printed on shiny thin toilet paper, poor pictures and slalom and cornering g obsessed reviews)

AutoCar is head and shoulders above them but EVO TOWERS above all, I reserve judgement until they publish.

Anyone who has driven a 335i will tell you that the new 3 Series is very heavily biased towards refinement and comfort and it seems that the m3 is too refined in a similar vein).

Felix

RS4 vs. M3 by AutoExpress:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/carrevi...xecutives.html

#1 - Audi
#2 - BMW

Carl Lassiter

One fact stood out and I'm not sure it's right- the said the new M3 was 5kg HEAVIER than the RS4. Without AWD and 4-doors that surely can't be true?

Anyway, Autocar did a full head-to-head in their latest issue and came to exactly the same conclusion. To say Autocar is not a respected source sounds like sour grapes. Tom Ford from Top Gear on his blog said the M3 was great, which was expected, but also not as hard edged as it could be. I'll say one thing though, for it to be better than the Audi 4.2 it must be some engine and M can really aggressive performance motors, as evidenced by the 3.2 I6 and V10.

For months on this forum certain people have been saying how when the M3 arrives no one will want the RS4. Well it's beating the M3 in the dry, so imagine what it would do to it in the wet. The C63 sounds like it's a great step up from the C55 and will certainly rule in a straightline but will it cover an undulating backtroad as quick as the RS4? I guess we'l have to wait for the full roadtest.

ultraseven

Most American publications tend to be very PC, and rarely use the words: horrid, terrible, preposterous, etc. Must be the lawyers, but I find most Brit mags to be a lot more critical and informative.

gkstar

Can't wait to see the C63 reviews. When the C32 came out in 2001-2002, it made a big splash - comparison reviews were way up there (I have probably read them all, the C63 has the potential to make a bigger and more definitive one for the AMG line

Andy7oaks

You lost credibility when you said Top Gear. I am not sure about Road and Track and Car and Driver but Top Gear is the pants when it comes to proper tests on the fastest machines. Clarkson, Tom Ford, give me a break.

Autocar and Evo have the best car testers in the UK at the moment and probably the world when it comes to sports cars. Both Autocar and Evo had drivers in the Nurburgring 24 hours this year, Porsche and Aston Martin respectively, so saying "that autocar crap" just shows your ignorance I'm afraid.

Steve Sutcliffe who wrote "crap" used to race TVR's and for the last few months has been living with an Alpina 3 series BMW as his long term test car.

Cheers


Andy

LeftCoastBias

c55 > c63

Stormin

For 10K less than an RS4, I'll put up with being a few tenths of a second slower when it's snowing. (A friend took delivery of his RS4 Friday. It cost him $75,000 before TTL)

In inclement weather, being fast is the last thing on my mind.

Improviz

Inclement weather is hardly the only venue in which the RS4 shines. It beat the M3's time at Nurburgring by 13 full seconds ( by way of example, the E46 M3 beat the 350Z's time by 4 seconds; the RS4 better than tripled this margin). The RS4 also beat the M3's time by 2.4 seconds at Hockenheim, a shorter track, despite being significantly heavier--an astonishing accomplishment.

Both of these were done on dry tracks.

M&M

1stly the RS4 used in the Sport Auto Supertest around the Ring & Hockenheim had the following options:

- Pirelli P-Zero Corsa tyres
- Optional Sports Suspension Plus
- Optional Ceramic brakes.

Improviz & I can argue about how much time that makes up. I don't know. we can argue how good or bad the Corsa's are. There are estimates of how many seconds the Corsa's take off your time, but If I post that Improviz will take it apart & accuse me of a whole heap of lies & then contact my mom. So I'll just put it up in the air.

The M3 was tested once in 2001 around the Ring with whatever tyres were the order of the day in 2001. I suspect Conti SportContacts' or Michelin PS1. both of those have had updates over the years. Tyre technology does not stand still in 6years. The big companies I assume have large R&D departments that try to make tyres better with every iteration.

Here is the 343hp E46 M3 on normal street tyres against the 420hp RS4 with Corsa tyres, Optional sports suspension & optional ceramic brakes around Hockenheim:



Here's a Greek mag that tested the RS4 Iassume without the Corsa tyres:



Best motoring in Japan on the "time attack" lap:



Autocar also found the M3 quicker around the circuit, as tested in a shoot-out.

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto...wmodels/22346/

Before Improviz takes me apart, & posts 4 million links to RS4's winning, I would like to add that I think it depends on the circuit layout & tyres as to which car will be quicker. I MOST CERTAINLY BELIEVE AN RS4 CAN & SHOULD BEAT AN E46 M3. But the reverse is also possible.

Zod

Um didn’t the m5 win the jap test? I recall it was white and was behind until it mashed all the rest.

Also the m5 on that sheets looks terrible! Are you trying to tell me a 335 destroyed it that much?

One brings to question the type of track and how it may favour certain types of cars.

Also you have to take into account tracks are good, but do not represent daily normal roads that we use
All I can think of is if the m3 uses same engine as m5 - the 2 cylinders and low on the tq side and been in a track that does not support high speed numbers, might run into a bit of bother. Also isn’t the new m3 smg free? Or free of the new varient of it?
Not sure and these are speculations

but I believe times of bmw blowing everything out of the water are not as they used to be, as we have seen with the amg / rs incarnations of present and the last 4 years.

Improviz

You forgot to point out that the RS4 is also 150kg/330pounds heavier than the M3, which is aa distinct disadvantage.

Hmm, interesting....now, you argue that the Corsas give the RS4 an unfair advantage at the track, and yet when I pointed out to you previously that these same Corsas on an M6 gave it an unfair advantage in track tests, you were singing a very different tune; here you are quoted from various posts in this thread
So, M&M, allow me to paraphrase, um, well, you:
1. Are you going to discount the times of the RS4 just because it comes with different rubber?? In some countries, lots of cars come with R-compounds stock!
2. That's the way the RS4s leave the factory. Some cars come with carbon roofs!
3. They come stock like that. Live with it.
4. Yes, they give it an advantage. But life is not fair.



But my intention was not to turn this into a comparison of the E46 M3 vs. the RS4; I was only trying to show that the RS4 is *not* a star in incliment weather but under all conditions, and I plainly stated this. No need to get defensive. The Corsas certainly assisted in this, but slapping a set of sticky tires on a car *alone* won't put it in that strata of performance, as I'm sure you're aware....still, I wish we had a non-Corsa test to compare (although we don't for the M6 either, afaik ).

The ceramic brakes would also help, more markedly on Hockenheim than on Nurburgring, as the latter is much longer which would give brakes more time to cool (ceramics work better when warm, and they'd definitely get warmer on the shorter track). But again: the RS4 is also 150kg/330pounds heavier than the M3, a distinct disadvantage.

Well, even in the test you provided, the RS4 (0.4 seconds slower than the first one I cited, btw) was still faster. And this M3, which was (as I'm sure you know) far and away the fastest European E46 non-CSL M3 ever tested.

Btw, the RS4 that I cited did have the ceramics, but I can't confirm it for the second, slower one in the article you quoted; einsdrei does state that the first one had them, but does not about the second; do you have confirmation of this? It is true that both RS4s did have the "life-is-not-fair" Corsas.

As to the Italian test, no telling what tires it had from what you provided...and I don't speak Japanese, so no telling what the comments between mean. I will point out that since most drivers are more used to RWD than to AWD, they are probably more comfortable in the Bimemr than in the Audi, as AWD can be a bit trickier, although supposedly w/the RS4 this is less of an issue than in the past.

But again: my original post was in response to a guy who'd implied that the RS4 was only a star under incliment weather conditions, and my intention was ***only*** to point out that this is untrue. I was not intending to denigrate your beloved M3, nor do I have any desire or intent to get into a debate over these two cars. Obviously, as both your numbers and mine demonstrate, the RS4 is a great all-around performer, under wet *or* dry conditions.

If history is any guide, the new M3 will probably pull faster times than the RS4, but we'll have to wait and see for that one. I'm more interested in seeing the C63/M3 shootout.

Sorry to disappoint, but I will be doing no such thing; I was only out to establish the RS4's performance credentials in the dry, nothing more. I agree (gasp) with you that, particularly if both cars were on equal tires without ceramics on the RS4, this would be a closer race, but without same track/same driver numbers, all we can do is speculate.

M&M

You are correct sir. An RS4 in certain countries can be specced with Corsa's, optional sports suspension & ceramic brakes. I don't think these options are available in the US (I could be wrong), but nevertheless if it is specced so then it leaves the factory like that. I didn't say it's not stock, I'm just pointing out part of the reason for its time discrepancies from one magazine to the next.

But the "fastest" E46 M3 test I posted is merely a test of a newer car than the one you posted. Probably had the latest tyres like Michelin PS2 or something, but don't quote me on that. But the suspension & brakes are the same techology from 2000 & the engine is also mostly 2000 tech, although there have been some minor updates over the years.

The RS4 does have 420hp, but sure you are correct that the M3 is 150kg lighter. But it leaves the factory like that.

MidniteBluBenz

thats crazy talk. what makes you think that?

Seems like the E92 M3 will be almost like an E39 M5 with two doors based on what I've read about it so far. Maybe expectations were too high for this M3..

Either way, I am absolutely in love with the sound of the 4.0L V8 in it.

Evo is the greatest Mag in Europe for auto reviews. C&D is best around N/A.

MiamiAMG

Lol, the minute someone talks about any M losing to another car, M&M crawls out of the woodworks. You can set your clock to it.

SteveL

Proper because it is favorable? BS. Gee, imagine the C&D rag giving a favorable review to a BMW. I'm sure in a comparison between a BMW and a Ferrari F430, C&D would find some way to get the BMW to come out on top. Almost all of the euro mags are saying it is faster but not as involving to drive as the E46 M3. I don't call that a step forward. They did the same thing with the new M5. Many prefer the E39.