RE: BMW M3: PH Carpool

[SidewaysSi]

BigLion said:

cerb4.5lee said:

johnwilliams77 said:

BigLion said:

What car would you suggest instead?

Caterham

Imagine if you had a Caterham/Cayman/M3 in the garage and it was a lovely sunny Sunday morning and you wanted to just go for a drive for the sake of it...

I wouldn't be jumping into the family car that's for sure

Well that's a really dumb statement

It's like complaining that the 997 GT3 is crap as it doesn't do off-road as well as a 4x4 - you buy a car in a certain class/type vis-a-vis the reason for that class of car - e.g. the m5 as a super saloon.

You don't buy a helicopter and then complain it doesn't sail as well as a boat

Please engage brain first !!!

To be fair many people are saying how wonderful to drive the M3 is. It's a jack of all trades machine. A great compromise etc.

[mpit]

velocgee said:

oh, and reckon it's the MPE you want, not the Akra

I thought the MPE sounded pretty tame, to be honest.

You also don't get the power bump and weight saving of the Akra

[Avus Blue]

velocgee said:

Avus Blue said:

I only ever run it on V power which doesn't help with the running costs but I think it's the best fuel out there and have never had issues,

i've found my car works best with BP Ultimate. others have also noted this.

I can't think of anywhere close to me that sells BP, but the shell garage is quite near by. Plus I have a points card. After that mad August I had last year I had a whole 7 quid voucher back, well worth the 300 quid I chucked in it in just over a week!

[Avus Blue]

mpit said:

velocgee said:

oh, and reckon it's the MPE you want, not the Akra

I thought the MPE sounded pretty tame, to be honest.

You also don't get the power bump and weight saving of the Akra

The thing is, I'm not just after the noise, I'm after the looks too. I hate the standard rear box and the way it looks hanging under the bottom of the bumper and the standard shiny tips are the only bright bits left on the car now I've changed the front grilles, side gills and wheels. I know I could take the shiny parts off or buy the gloss back ones like the Edition models but they're 400 quid for 4 small bits of tube! A remus or akrapovic changes this to two smaller inline boxes which are way less visible and give a choice of tailpipe finishers, including carbon ones which is much more what I want. I'm quite tempted to look into the Motech M450 conversion as that includes a full remus system along with the remap and filter for about 1500 quid which seems like a bargain to me and had a positive write up in this month's BMW Car magazine

[mpit]

That does seem like very good value if the exhaust is any good.

For me, aside from getting it at a really good price, the Akra almost seemed like the cheapest option for me given that they used value is rock solid - especially since they stopped making them!

[Wills2]

velocgee said:

Avus Blue said:

I only ever run it on V power which doesn't help with the running costs but I think it's the best fuel out there and have never had issues,

i've found my car works best with BP Ultimate. others have also noted this.

Not sure why it would as it's only 97ron all of my previous n/a M3s always felt a little flat running BP compared to 99ron V-power.

[mpit]

Wills2 said:

Not sure why it would as it's only 97ron all of my previous n/a M3s always felt a little flat running BP compared to 99ron V-power.

I've never really been able to tell the difference between 97 and 99 in mine.

I tend to aim for Shell garages by default, but that's still left over from my old turbo cars feeling like they ran better/smoother on Vpower over Tesco stuff.