In the world of highly sought-after BMWs, the BMW E46 M3 holds a special place. The prices for this model have already started creeping up and it will most likely become a collector’s item in the near future. Out of the M3 models the Germans put together back in the day, the CSL is the most prized one for rather obvious reasons. However, the fastest version of the M3 was not the CSL but rather the GTR which was not road legal.
However, since BMW wanted to race these hardcore iterations of the M3 in various competitions, it had to build a few of them in road-legal guise. The rules kept changing in the early 2000s, therefore BMW only made 10 units of the road-legal version of the GTR and all of them held quite a premium over anything else the Germans were selling back then. There were other changes done to it as well, from the body to the engine itself.
Like all other BMW race cars, the GTR came with a different engine from the S54 3.2-liter straight six used by the standard M3 or the CSL version. In this guise the beating heart under the hood was the P60B40 engine, a 4-liter V8 good for anything between 444-470HP. In the 10 road-legal cars the engine was making 380 HP but it was still a V8 which was highly atypical for those days. The car in the video below is using the race car engine and claims to be putting out 444 HP and 480 Nm of torque.
As you’re about to see, the engine is not the only thing that seems to be coming straight from the GTR. The body was also changed to be more aerodynamic while the interior was stripped out, the windows replaced with plexiglass and a roll cage added inside. Overall, this may very well be one of the most hardcore E46 M3s we’ve seen being taken around the Ring and it definitely has the sound to match.
