Harris's rally M3: update

The impulse-buy BMW M3 rally project is steadily taking shape

By Chris Harris / Tuesday, 8 October 2013 / Loading comments

Couple of weeks back

the M3 rally car

had its first public outing - albeit in static form. The shell in now complete, and it has taken some completing.

Come on in the water is ... actually not lovely

Now, adding bits of metal, welding, dipping and painting are not the most exciting part of any build, but as we all know a rally car is only as good as the shell itself, so Neil and the Rally Prep team have gone to town on this one.

The piccies are mostly self-explanatory, but the sheer number of hours that goes into the preparation, the seam welding and the massive structural additions is a bit sobering. Then again, trees are quite tough objects.

I also complicated things by going to the Nurburgring. I know, this is a rally car, but at the Eiffelrennen Classic I was transfixed by the E30 M3s pounding around and phoned Neil to ask how difficult it would be to make a rally car we could occasionally take to the 'ring and race. The man is unflappable, so he simply took the shell back to Caged in Frome and redesigned the door bars and a few elements of the cage!

Surplus factory mountings marked and removed

I have throttled (pun intended) right back on the engine spec too. Partly because building a 270hp engine was going to be very expensive, but also because I think I'd quite like to to get accustomed to sensible power on gravel before graduating to a complete missile. In

the old 325i

you can approach immovable objects at quite alarming speed, and that only has 160hp.

Anyways, as is often the case, we've stumbled across a ready-built engine with zero miles, in a relatively sane specification that has been built by one of the people you want building these things. Power should be around 240hp, which I think will do me just fine on gravel. Fear not. Because I'm an addict, I will have the original motor sent off to be fashioned into a 290hp frothing monster for when my testicles can handle such things. Besides, it would appear that owning anything associated with an E30 M3 is a good investment right now, so having another engine is no bad thing.

Could've just restored it and sold it on...

Of course the irony is, if I'd just buffed the paintwork on the car when it was red, spent a few grand getting it sorted for the road and flogged it, I'd probably have made £10K. But that was never the point.

Now the shell's done, the build will progress quite quickly, so more updates in the coming weeks. I'm getting rather excited!