There’s a lot to criticize about modern BMW performance cars, including their relative lack of steering feel and their designs. However, no one can knock BMW M’s engines, as they’re all immense. BMW’s S58 engine, the 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged inline-six that makes 473 horsepower in its base spec, can be tuned to make absurd levels of power. This specific S58 engine is heavily tuned and makes a monstrous 740 horsepower, which helps the G80 M3 it powers take on genuine supercars.
In this new video from Automotive Mike, you get to see the tuned M3 drag race against some impressive, exciting competition. We don’t know if the M3 was rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive but it honestly didn’t matter because every race featured a rolling start. From a standing start, a rear-drive M3 would just obliterate its tires, especially one with 740 horsepower. But in a rolling race, one that starts at around 40 km/h, it doesn’t really matter.
The M3 in this video rockets away and keeps up with even some heavily tuned supercars, like a McLaren 650S. Of course, the McLaren, which had about the same power but much lighter weight, eventually pulled away and won but the M3’s engine is shockingly strong. It’s able to hurl the nearly 4,000 four-door sedan toward the quarter-mile almost as quickly as the two-door, two-seat, carbon-tubbed supercar with its own twin-turbo V8. That’s no small feat and it’s one BMW should be very proud of.
It also shows the tonal shift for this new BMW M3. The M3 was never the fastest car in the bunch. It was never the car that blew spec sheets away. Instead, it was a car whose finesse and driving thrills made it so much fun. But now the M3 is an absolute red light drag strip monster. Anyone who’s driven this M3 knows that it feels more like a supercar than it does like a sports sedan and it’s mostly great. It’s the new Nissan GT-R in that it’s so brutally, violently effective that it’s fantastically fun, even if it isn’t the purist’s sports car that it used to be. And this video is evidence of that.
