Making your own M car

[Weekendrebuild]

So story goes ...

I wanted a hatch back but just couldn’t get on with any of the 1 series offerings . Perfectly good car my wife daily’s a 140i . It just didn’t feel special to me but I wanted a small hatch so I decided to create an M3 compact of the e46 variant . My question is has anyone else built one of these on here? It’s been harder work than expected ....

[Butter Face]

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[Weekendrebuild]

Nice one for that not sure if this guys replaced the Whole front end tho? that’s we’re the fun begins engines exhaust easy easy body work has took a lot of brazing

[Schermerhorn]

I was thinking of this the other week

Buy a E36 coupe with M3 bodykit (plenty of these still about), respray it into a desirable 'M' colour and drop a later S54 engine into it.

How hard can it be, right?

[Weekendrebuild]

Not hard if you know the cars . But it’s not just engine I’ve swapped diff custom prop shaft Porsche brakes etc etc . To be honest not much point in doing a coupe you can buy a real one ! I’ve only done the compact for rarity really

[Schermerhorn]

Weekendrebuild said:

Not hard if you know the cars . But it’s not just engine I’ve swapped diff custom prop shaft Porsche brakes etc etc . To be honest not much point in doing a coupe you can buy a real one ! I’ve only done the compact for rarity really

Indeed, something like a Compact would really appeal.


I was also thinking about the possibility of having a project E36 Touring M3 too; Estoril blue and Sunflower wheels. What a sight that would be.

[Weekendrebuild]

Schermerhorn said:

Indeed, something like a Compact would really appeal.


I was also thinking about the possibility of having a project E36 Touring M3 too; Estoril blue and Sunflower wheels. What a sight that would be.

Indeed done the touring thing about 3 years ago she’s buried away at the back of garage she’s running a complete e36 evo setup



That’s front end going on the compact to remove them god awful lights an nice flared m3 arches

[Weekendrebuild]

Exhaust system went in this evening just lining her up an making fill piece for the old hole

[supermanraf]

I know of a few conversions, I converted my E36 to run a combination of S50B32 and 3.0 M3 running gear. Certainly be a lot easier these days to do an S54 as the price of an S50B32 these days is probably a little prohibitive.

If you need some contact details for a few places, pm me and i'll send you some info. I do have a friend who built a dakar yellow E36 M3 with an S54, heavily track biased, but road legal.

Good luck with your conversion, I'm sure it will be fun whatever route you choose!