Sell Everything You Own And Buy This V10 Manual E46 BMW M3
Have you seen E46 M3 CSL prices lately? They are - unless you already own one - downright depressing. Just one is listed for sale on Autotrader currently, and it’ll set you back £69,990. And that’s not the most expensive I’ve seen: there’s even one for £100,000 knocking around.
If you want a very special E46 M3 but can’t stretch to that, let me present a solution: the M3 you see here. And while it looks like any other E46 M3 from the outside, as you’ll see from the next image, it has something rather special under the bonnet.
Yep, it’s the S85 5.0-litre V10 from an E60 M5. Better yet, it’s been hooked up to the six-speed manual gearbox from an E9x M3.
We’re looking at the M5’s 500bhp output in a car that weighs around 300kg less. This, ladies and gents, is going to be a very quick car. And it shouldn’t be quite as nose-heavy as you’d imagine: despite displacing an extra 1800cc, the S85 V10 weighs just 25kg more than the stock M3’s S54 straight-six.
The price for all this? £30,000, which - when you consider the amount of work that conversion will have required - doesn’t seem so bad.
Can you think of a better BMW engine swap than this? Let us know in the comments!
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
why is the shifter of the bmw so long?
The only thing wrong with it is that the steering wheel is on the wrong side.
I’d still prefer an S65 in an E46 rather than an S85… from a track-oriented standpoint. (The S65 apparently weighs less than than S54)
SpoolTheCool mother of all engine swaps
Easy 😂 gadi pan baap engine pan baap set life
The original article claims that this S85 V10 came from the previous generation M5. This is incorrect. The V10 came from the M5 which was TWO generations ago, not one.
As for importation, it may not be as complicated as you might think. The S85 has already been certified as legal in the USA. This car may have to undergo some lighting and emissions surgery to enter the country, as well as have the instruments calibrated to miles instead of km’s, but the rest should be pretty straight forward. The S85 is also newer than the E46 car it went into, so it should meet legal requirements for the swap as well (EPA just doesn’t want the opposite - older engine into newer chassis).