It's near enough impossible to imagine now, but back in 2003 the world wasn't all that enamoured by the M3 CSL. Here was a car only marginally faster than the standard E46 M3 - because it only had another 17hp - yet one that was almost £20k more expensive thanks to its obsessive, carbon-intense weight loss programme. It was great, of course, because it was derived from perhaps the best M3 ever, but perhaps not as great as was hoped for. And it came only with that infernal SMG gearbox.
Nobody raved about the BMW's automated manual in the early 2000s, and time has not been kind to the technology; improved automatics and the advance of dual-clutch boxes has made the old robotised manuals look the worst of both worlds, lacking both smoothness and involvement. The dream, surely, would be a manual CSL. Well, dream no longer, M3 fans, because there's a solution at hand...
Everything M3s has just launched its manual gearbox conversion kit for the E46 CSL. Now, clutch-and-lever work has taken place on the SMG cars for a while - especially when they were worth less money - though the Everything M3s package is notable for having been endorsed by DK Engineering, as well as using only boxed BMW parts.
Using 180 bits and taking a few days work, the conversion adds in a new clutch and flywheel, a recode for the ECU to work with a manual gearbox and, of course, the lever itself. All the work is reversible, too, should originality be important for resale, though it would surely be hard to revert back to the SMG having tried the manual set up.
Everything M3s was formed by Darragh Doyle, and the manual kit from his frustration at the SMG transmission. He says of the conversion: "I was annoyed that the CSL - in my opinion the best of the best - never had a manual gearbox, so I decided to engineer my own. It is easier to live with in traffic and around town, while giving total control on a racetrack. A manual M3 CSL is the car that BMW should have always built."
Sounds pretty compelling, right? It would seem plenty of people are in agreement with Darragh, as Everything M3s is said to have a waiting list for the work at the moment; lead times are said to be "reasonable", however. Prices start art £3,500, which isn't all that much, although the chunky cost of a CSL donor car - now a bonafide classic for a few years - must be taken into account. This privately offered car looks ideal, with 73,000 miles recorded and a £44k asking price - otherwise you'll need to pay another £20,000 for something less used. And however good a manual CSL might be, is it really a £70,000 experience? We'll leave that one with you...
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