BMW F80 M3 Review | The Sports Car for Mathematicians By savagegeese

I got a fax from a buddy he's an executive vice president of international sales for a multi-billion dollar corporation. The fax said: when are you going to do the f80, m3 and I responded back I said I'm sick of BMWs. All the em cars seem to be the same these days. Then he sent me a picture of the upcoming front end of the 3-series and I almost vomited in my hat. So what you're going to get is a montage of the exterior. So you can appreciate just how good this car looks from the outside before they go and screw it up, because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight.

I drove an $80,000 BMW, that's my name: I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork I have every tool you could possibly imagine best of all kids and liquid. My girlfriend's Anusha said: when are you going to give me BMW in white, and I said well, I can't afford it right now, and she threatened to leave me, so I borrowed this from a viewer thank God. He gave it to me, so I could go to the clubs with her, and the first thing we noticed when we got in here is all the carbon-fiber all over the place, and it looks good. It doesn't look like the know: fakes stuck on like vinyl decals, there's tasteful use of it. There's literally no use of piano gloss black plastic, there's a ton of matte textures.

It just looks like a solid, well done, BMW interior. This has the red option. So you get these m3 seats that have cutouts in the middle partially to reduce weight. They feel like a true. They feel like a real sport seat, something you can take to the track super supportive.

Unless you were like 300 pounds, or you're a bigger person. This is going to feel like you're, getting hugged by a bear and I like them. A lot I like the tasteful accents all over the interior that make it feel a little more special than just a standard 3-series. Now, just because there's so many classic BMW things in here doesn't mean they didn't do gimmicks, because after all, it's 2019 2020. We need gimmicks so when you go to valet park this at Applebee's, there is an M logo that shines on the ground from the side mirror just so they know who you are.

The other thing is the seats. They have a m3 that lights up, so you know I think a lot of people think that's cool, but whatever that's what it is, but that's that's pretty much the only gimmicks on the inside of this even from the exterior proportions. It's things that you can see, and you can't see the use of carbon fiber on the roofline to increase rigidity. The trunk is CFRP carbon, reinforced plastic or resin. It's a composite material, there's aluminum on the hood and on the door skin, so they're trying to reduce weight, there's a bunch of technical stuff about this car.

That makes it special, but the rest of the interior is again it's normal BMW stuff. They haven't gone to complete digital gauges here. The gauge cluster is your traditional analog, looking speedometer tachometer your temperature gauge and, of course, your fuel gauge and there's just small screens at the bottom to augment that for your driving boats, it is so tastefully done. I'm going to miss this when it's gone to all digital now, since this has the dual clutch option, you can still get a manual in this car. All the drive mode.

Selector are right next to the stick, which is great because it makes it stupid simple to choose. You know your engine, setting your damper, setting your steering setting and your traction control. Alright, here you don't have to go hunting for it, and you don't have to deal with it in the touchscreen, but other than that. I think the best thing to do is head into the shop and talk about all the technical aspects of this car. Well, mark I brought you another BMW.

This is a 2018, BMW, m3 f80 competition. Hmm, you know what I brought what mark, because I'm, probably gonna, fall asleep halfway through this thing. I know you have a real passion for BMWs yeah. You have an addiction to them. I sort of got okay: why don't you bring some dough? Is the next thing? I know it's like I got a line down the block.

All these things and the strange part is I. Had the predecessor to this car I owned one, the e92 m3, which kind of started all these videos, the first BMW I did and one of the reasons I got. That is because, when I drove this for the first time, the very first model year I'm like what happened to this car, it is so what it was so sterile. So I think, as Jack starts to explain the history and the development this car. It starts to make sense why it has this feeling that it does and there are some pros and cons which we're going to discuss in great detail.

So, as you said, this is one of the most polarizing m3s they ever built. It's the first one, the forced induction. It has a lot more electronic any's. Furthermore, it definitely feels digital or overengineered, but they did that for a reason. When Riemann designed this car mind you've Airmen, worked on the e30, the granddaddy to all this ether, t6e 46, where he was where he was involved with a race program in 92, and he from what I understand.

He'd led this project, largely he wanted to build a race car for the street. I know that's super overused, and he's the king of marketing, but that's what his goal was. He wanted to have the raw emotion of pounding around a race car, but you could then take to work. He wanted something reliable, far more reliable than the 92 specifically on the track. Furthermore, he wanted something more efficient.

Basically, every way you can improve the previous generation m3 and all its deficiencies have been improved here on every single engineering and technical level possible and I guess we'll get to the drive we'll talk about if that worked or not. So what's going on in the front end? So this is on the core architecture. It is a strut front, multi-link rear. It is aluminum everywhere it is aluminum skid plate uh-huh. Furthermore, it is far more rigid than the previous car as well, and it has all new brakes, yeah Bimbos and that's a big upgrade from the e92, because you're that giant single piston front caliper that was just garbage, so the braking is basically the entire front.

End has been improved, yeah and then, of course, talk about the cooling. There are seven heat exchangers on this car cooling was an issue on the 92 and when you add two turbos to an engine, that problem is only going to get worse, so you have two inner coolers. You have a dedicated oil cooler. You have a trans cooler if you've got the DCT, which this car unfortunately has, and they've also added a magnesium oil pan. This whole car with Riemann, wanted, as he wanted to shave weight out of the m3 every generation from the e30 the car got heavier.

This is the first one that they made lighter it's a hundred eighty pounds lighter than Yuri ninety-two, okay, well, all those weight, saving things do add up. It does also have two pickups in the oil pan for oiling. So there was a lot of thought to making this more durable, but let's take a look at the back half of the car and the middle part of the car, and we'll talk more about some of these changes. What we've made it to the back of the m3 yeah? How does this look when compared to your 92? Aside from this aftermarket exhaust? There's a few things you definitely notice from the e 1992 rear end. The subframe is different, although it is still a steel piece.

The lower control arms are very, very similar, including their pickup points, the upper arm, the lower control arm houses the spring and in damper the exact same way, but your rear tolling is now an aluminum piece where it was a stamped steel piece that was carried over from all the three series, but they actually operated all while they operated this arm specifically. So yes, the pickup points are different. The subframe carrier is different, and it's also partly because they decided to hard mount it to the body of the car for rigidity which they could do because the body structure of this car is far more rigid than the e90 series was. It is approximately twice as rigid as an e30 racecar that Airman designed, which how old is that car, though thirty years ago he was making a comparison by saying they had all this high-strength steel they used in tubing in the car for its roll cage and all that and this car was literally just as rigid as a full-blown race car from like 20-30 years ago yeah. So that's how much body structure is advanced over time and there 's's been a very steep increase in the technology, that's being used in these types of cars.

So it's neat to hear that great example. The other thing to note mark is this DCT transit. You could get a dual clutch in later year: 92 m3s. However, this dual clutch comes right out of the m5 we drove interesting. It has different tuning.

This is the f10 m5 gearbox, there's different tuning different software, but the physical unit is identical, and it goes into this M differential, which is a led ironic diff that can either go. You know, be entirely open when you're, not on throttle cornering or when you start to apply throttle, can walk all the way up to a hundred percent and one of the things that they wanted to do with this differential. And you know this is a lot of cars. Don't have this flexibility if you have a straight mechanical differential, you can't do these tricks, so they use steering wheel, angle, sensors, these g-force sensors, they use, speed, sensors and basically, the cars programming. Is that where you can go into a corner, if you're kind of half throttle, it knows not to go full lock.

But if you go into a corner, it detects g-force and this huge steering wheel angle. It knows you want to drift, and it will lock the differential. So you can slide the car around. So they were aware of the type of things that people would be doing with us, and they were fully prepared. Then they designed all of this to do it, and that it is very cool to see that level of thought and that's why BMW has kind of always been that type of car.

You know that drivers' car that thing that that makes it more engaging at the limit. The other thing they did is they added a hollow single piece. Carbon fiber drive shaft here, which you really can't see, and it's covered up for good reason. You don't want to have that damage to that, because I'm sure it's probably like before a car a thousand dollars to replace it, but is there anything else that we're missing I know they're? They made some changes during the mid-cycle refresh for this car. So this is a competition car, a competition package, cars, so the complaint they had with this car when it first came out was the EPS.

It was a very controversial decision, because the e92 steering well I know you and I disagree on that car. The e92 sm-3 steering was phenomenal. It really was. It was hydraulic as well, which, every time you got it heated up on track, the reservoir would blow power. Steering fluid all over everything to minor details yeah, but when this car came out, journalists ripped it a new one.

Basically they said the steering was dead, the variable modes and do anything they just made it artificially heavy, and they were right. When this car first came out, the steering was horrendous. It's probably not fair, but it just wasn't very good right, as the years progressed, I think with the second mid-cycle refresh and with the competition package they changed the way the steering was tuned to add a little more feel and make it more direct. It's not perfect, but in this day and age really no EPS is gonna. Give you a ton of feedback to the wheel.

This is about as good as you're going to get it well and electronically, as cars have evolved. When you get all these different drive modes connected to everything like we were talking about with the differential, you can't really incorporate all electronics into a hydraulic unit. Yes, you can have steering wheel angles, sensors and all that, but the EPS allows them for far more program, ability of how that that steering box works, and it's much better for saving weight and packaging. Now the packaging is much easier to get in there to stuff other things in to reduce weight. So there's a bunch of reasons why they do it.

I just think that people that press of that generation they expected hydraulic power, steering feel, and they're totally different systems. You can't recreate that type of feel and I think there's been that transition now, and it's not indicative of this car. It's indicative of all cars and I think because BMW is always pushing kind of the engineering boundaries of what's new. What they can do next they're the first to get kicked in the nuts every time they come out with something. And then you look back you're like MMM.

It really wasn't that bad. It was just kind of different and while I'm not the biggest BMW fanboy I can appreciate all the engineering that went into this to try to make it better. But again, it's something that looking at it objectively is good and that's what we're doing in the shop. That's what our purpose is of talking about this stuff. But let's take a look under the hood.

Would you look at all that carbon fiber remark? I, remember when I saw this for the first time when this car came out, I was at the Auto Show and I asked one of the BMW reps, and that was before I was doing this I'm, like. Is that really necessary? He's like well, the dry carbon autoplaying processes been shown to save, at least he just wanted to this ridiculous explanation of why they were using a carbon-fiber, strut, tower brace I'm. Like just say it's a gratuitous use of carbon fiber, it's completely unnecessary and cool. You know it really is cool. It's like a pancake I'd love to see how much that cost or a place, though probably more than your house, by more than I'm worth as I mentioned below.

It has two turbos. Furthermore, it is the third generation. According to Albert Riemann of M power, BMW twin turbos, it was on the x5 M. Then it was on the m5 and m6, and then it made it onto this car, and this is the competition yes, so it makes like 25 more horsepower. I believe this has 450 horsepower where the base model has around 425.

This is right around the start of where they start to use that competition nameplate, which is typical, indicative of just getting more horsepower and some others. It's indicative of winning mark, oh yeah, so you're going to win. That's why they have now an at was a x3 competition, because you need an SUV. That's going to win I, always win when I'm on the school run. No, so what's cool about this car is he wanted a naturally aspirated feeling turbocharged engine? It's not! It makes all its torque down low, and it makes 40% more torque than the s65.

The v8 car does not feel naturally aspirated, but it does Rev this car revs. The set me 500, rpm I, think that's better. What he meant is that you can wring it out and still not have that dip in, like overall horsepower it still winds out and it's peaky at the top end and still making worse power. In his words, he wanted the emotion of a naturally aspirated car and to be fair, it does make power, basically all the way to redline, and it makes a pocket load of power. It feels a lot faster than 450 horsepower leads you to believe.

Okay, the DCT in this car, just like it felt in the f10 m5, feels like it's out of a supercar. This transmission is phenomenal yeah. It is its a very different direction that they took compared to the e90, 92 and I. Think this is a massive evolution. We talk about this every time we have an M car that now that we've looked at the past, and we've moved into the present.

It's just unbelievable. How much they've been able to do here and the key thing that Riemann talked about is improving overall reliability, and that is something that BMW is probably it's either. You think of their great performance, kind of machines or their horribly unreliable pieces of there are two camps of thought yeah. So this is the car. This is the generation where they were really trying to turn that around make them more durable.

Have better longevity, try to brake with that, and that was and that was also something that I was able to talk about with the Toyota engineers when they brought up the Supra they said look BMW had made a turnaround point. They made a conscious decision internally to make changes to quality the way they built things to think about a little longer term and this generation so far at least while this is the such kind of like that mid-cycle part. So far, it's been pretty good right, yeah this engine because he focused on durability. It needed to be bomb-proof. That was his goal for this cover, so he addressed all the cooling he addressed the internals for this car.

He made sure the turbos were properly cool. That's what he went to a mechanical water pump versus an electric one that you got in the previous generations. He made sure the internals were lightweight and forged. It has no liners, that's a closed n, so clothes deck. It is a very stout engine people by just changing the turbos, not that I recommend you do this or getting 900 horsepower to this car and running nine second quarter miles, and they're not blowing up the bottom end is a very stout power plant, so this is kind of the precursor to all the new generation M cars and BMW products, they're coming out, and it's kind of exciting, but is as good as this car is now mechanically.

Furthermore, it has some deficiencies that everything good is good on paper. So let's take this for a drive and address some of the things that it doesn't do so well, well mark we're in the business mobile we're in the Patagonia we're in the Midwestern tuxedo for the day. Yeah, you better believe it I am. You know I'm sorry, but we got to get this done under five minutes. I got mergers to do so.

This is an interesting car and per usual I, probably like this BMW, a little more than you do, but tell me what you think about the m3 is old, okay, so I'm going to bring up something that we don't typically talk about, and that is the psychology behind these types of cars, and we had a great discussion about this yesterday, the BMW and specifically this car. The way it was designed is very type A. It's very type, a's, a very technical, very engineering focused and in a way it has this level of being so sterile that you don't feel a lot, there's not a lot of drama, and then, when you add on the fact that this is also now more reliable it, it appeals to a very specific demographic who appreciates this type of design of car. The emotional connection you get when driving this car comes some of the fact that does everything competently, not that it's exciting, and you made something you told me yesterday on the shop you like they went about, they went about designing fun. Mathematically with this, it has a very, very Germanic.

Yes, Germanic approach to what they feel fun is, and you know you had a chance to talk with URI and Jacob about this, and so when they were doing the new x3m, whatever the new m3 engine is in that car and when Jacob and URI were talking to the lead engineer, they went now is this thing going to be like a Hellcat, the new car, and she heated a engineer who worked on the x3m had no idea what a hell account was like. What's that, so they explained it to him. It's a 700 horsepower rear, wheel, rear wheel, drive car. That does not put traction down, and he did not understand how that could be fun. He had no comprehension in why someone would want a ridiculous rear-wheel drive non-efficient automobile, particularly in a sports car, and that's the sensation you get from this vehicle.

Everything about this car objectively is near-perfect, it rides well, the engine is extremely powerful is alarmingly fast. The steering is very direct. I mean the brakes are great. There's nothing. I can technically fault this car for yeah and when I first got in this, it was at Road, America I got on the in the m3 competition, and it had been I got in the launch car when it came out the m3, and it was one of the reasons why I didn't buy it and I bought the e92 m3 it's because I literally felt zero connection to this car.

Now this is different. This is the competition now, of course, the owner has an exhaust on it, so it makes a bit of a difference, as you can hear, but I still don't think it sounds good. I think there's this lack of a motion that comes from this car all right: it's not that I, don't like it. It just doesn't excite me the way, a more flawed automobile yeah and that's what I started to talk about the psychology between or the psychology of sports car ownership. It depends on the type of person you are where you're going to gravitate towards a specific vehicle and the M cars to me as I've gotten older as I've owned it to me.

I guess: yes, you can drive this every day you can like the owner. Does he literally drives this every day makes the most out of it? Any tracks it for me, I want a sports car that is literally more of a weekend toy that I look back at it, and I'm like that. Is cool and I look at this, and it looks like every single other BMW forever and it just I. Don't I just have no emotional response to it, regardless of if it's great or not, if your type a and you just want a car that goes really fast. Does the daily commute near perfectly? For what it is given.

That's ride compromises you don't really care about how you reach the speeds. You just want to be able to reach those speeds. This car is perfect for that. The engine itself, which is a high-revving which it does it rev to 7600 RPM, is so efficient in the way delivers power. It kind of same's the fun out of it on the street, though it is really alarmingly fast as and this DCT is phenomenal.

It's really impressive. All right, I mean I, don't want to downplay the fact that this is an incredible car I'm just trying to cover the other part of it by saying you know why doesn't this connect everybody? If it's the perfect car, why don't people love BMWs like it? You know trying to be all things to all people, and then we're really starts default. I think is. We need to take this to the track. It is the same problem beyond Tunes yeah.

You would chase the tail end around a lot in this car, and you can feel it just on the road I mean there's literally just all it does move around, but that's also I mean you. You can consider that fun. I know you like to go sideways into me. This is exactly why I don't like this is there's very little. Yeah, I mean with all the technical all the engineering there's very little precision about the way that this car makes power.

It has all this torque. It has just this insane amount of boost that comes on that. If you're trying to be smooth, you can't be it's like. You have to be just breathing on that throttle and even that, like that mid mid-corner you just do it wrong. It's going to go sideways and, to me, I spent more time chasing a car like this, then maximizing the performance and I feel like that's a lot of modern em cars, and that's why they're going to be going all wheel, drive on all the new ones, of course, because then they don't you don't have to deal with that as much, but I don't know.

I feel like this is an amazing car with these deficiencies that are only going to trigger people like me that want more theater. They want more drama, they want more stuff feeling something that's more special. That's not here. I mean I, agree with you, the engine while great on the street getting past the fact that it sounds terrible. The way it delivers power again, it's just like an engineer's, wet dream: maximum torque and maximum horsepower.

It's not progressive mid-corner mm, even 1500 2000 rpm. Do you stab the gas it's going to step out yeah? It wants to walk on you with the entire time and I think when you're going to put the e92 up to that with this the previous-generation and that the good thing about a naturally aspirated motor is that power is more linear and the torque isn't insane. You have to wind it out. So when you want to drive it more smoothly, you're not constantly fighting the car and the way that the torque is delivered and that's why I like those naturally aspirated motors from the past as a driver's car more than this, this will annihilate that car in any type of straight-line. It has such a big wow factor, but it's when you really try to wring it out to that eight nine, ten tenths, when you want to drive it more precise that this becomes a very frustrating driving experience, you're, not wrong.

The NIU ? you connect with that car emotionally the steering is, it may not be as precise, but you get feedback. The chassis speaks to you quite frankly, droves more than this does, but objectively, this is a better car. It is objectively it's better in every single way, except the minor details and on an emotional level it the engine is lacking something there, but this is the modern world of turbocharged forced induction cars that are starting to take over, and it makes you appreciate the older cars even more, but it also makes you appreciate just how far we've come in how much power is and everything now and that's a good time to talk about the final thoughts of this in the shop final thoughts on the f80 m3 2019 marks the last model year of this generation, a big thanks to the owner, who supplied me this car for the video and I have to say something. That's self-critical I tend to try to look at the good in the bad and often like in the case of this car I downplayed. So many of the great things about it that you would almost believe that this car's a piece of- and that's that's really not the case.

This is one of the best modern sports cars and granted I hate to say it's a sports car, but it really is its crazy fast. It's got one of the best, automated manual transmissions on the market. Today it has a manual transmission option. You can, you can truly buy a manual transmission option that doesn't suck, and it handles well, it's setup. Well, it's got four doors: it's comfortable its usable and supposedly this is one of the more reliable m3s and since I, only ninety-two and one of the reasons why I sold my am 3 was it was in the shop for like three months and that's a big problem.

I have with BMW products and, if they're, starting to turn the corner mechanically, where you're not gonna, have to deal with some of that, as somebody right now, I'm looking for a replacement for my daily driver because it got destroyed, I'm, going through cars like this Genesis, this g80 GAS and after driving, the m3 I, think there's really nothing better out there anymore. That's a four-door car that gives you performance that's totally usable every day, and in that regard it is amazing. It really is probably the best car in the market in this segment. For all the reasons I said now, there's some other things. BMWs done recently now Apple Carplay is free.

It's no longer a subscription service, which was a huge ding on these cars. They're updating the infotainment to set this latest generation of drive they've, updated it several times now to get rid of plenty of the bugs that they've introduced themselves, and it seems to me the overall consensus of getting in all these new em cars is yes, they're sterile, yes, they're somewhat bland they're removed they're superfast, but you don't feel anything, but that's every car. It's almost every single modern, sporty car on the market. Now, because the mass majority of the public does not want to feel anything, and you're in a quandary, if you're a manufacturer, do you build it a car for the enthusiast that wants to feel every little niggle and bump through the steering, wheel or harsh suspension, and all of that for that less than 1%? The straight answer is: no, because the people that are buying these cars are oftentimes over 50 years old or, if they're, younger, they're a lot more well-off and I. Think that's that's where the reality check comes in as this car stands.

It's one of the best things they've done in modern history, and that's it, thanks for watching I'll, see you next video, you, you.

Source : savagegeese