I always hated the E36 M3, but I was simply misguided and have since come to my senses. “It’s not a real M!” they say. I used to spout the same sentence up until my best friend bought one and I had the pleasure of kicking the backend out on a road outside of a truck stop on the way home from buying it. I had just sold my Porsche 944 and trailered it down to San Diego, and found this on Facebook Marketplace. And when I mean just sold, I mean I bought this car about an hour and a half after delivering the 944 and loaded it onto the trailer. It had a lot of things going for it. Namely the price, and the fact that it was a sedan rather than a coupe. You can’t spell coupe without cope. It also had a lot of things not going for it. Automatic transmission is one of them. 211,000 miles was another. “These are indestructible” they say. That might be the only thing they’ve said that I agree with now.
I wasn’t doing too great financially at this point, and this was now the 4th car in my possession. Luckily, a friend of mine had a complete manual swap he had procured for a cancelled project of his. Also lucky for me, he had a real desire to get his W124 Mercedes 300TE wagon back along with my cursed Land Rover Discovery 2. With a deal chopped up via text that involved a transfer of cars, parts, and cash, I was 2 cars down and one manual swap up.
A few weeks later, a friend of mine who works at a shop that specializes in Rolls-Royce and other British makes had a car lift open on a weekend unexpectedly. Unlike what had happened in WWII, a German did finally make its way onto British territory and the swap began. After a full weekend of “wrenching” and the application of unremovable grease to 70% of my body, my once automatic “fake M” was now starting to feel like a real M car. Easily one of the best cars I’ve had. Especially once I fixed all of the previous owner’s fun little surprises. Did I mention the previous owner was an aircraft mechanic for Delta? It must be FAA regulation to use this much RTV. Maybe after clearing through 14 cars, this one might be a keeper. Edit: 2 years later – still have it!