The 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed is the perfect opportunity for BMW to blow the 50th candle on the M’s anniversary cake. To mark the milestone, the German automaker has brought some shiny new cars, including the M3 Touring and M4 CSL. The iX1, i7, and M760e are also in West Sussex, and so are some race cars and purpose-built vehicles.
It’s easy to tell this M3 E92 Coupe with an obvious tail-happy nature has been modded, up to the point it no longer has a BMW engine. Indeed, the naturally aspirated S65 V8 has made way for a 2JZ, a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six all enthusiasts have heard of.
Truthfully, this wasn’t even an M3 to begin with as the car started out in life as a regular 320d. It now packs somewhere in the region of 900 horsepower after some serious modifications to turn it into a proper smoke machine owned by James Deane.
The Goodwood hill climb course is quite narrow, but with a skilled driver behind the wheel, this “M3” E92 simply refuses to go in a straight line. It’s burning rubber most of the time while making wonderful engine noise from its 2JZ hooked up to a sequential gearbox. See that wide body kit? It’s actually made from carbon Kevlar and then painted over rather than being wrapped.
The drift-happy E92 has more mods than we can count, including adjustable coilovers at the front and rear, chunky 295/40 R18 tires in the back, and a hydraulic handbrake lever inside the stripped-out cabin with a carbon bucket seat. Being a proper drift car, safety was of utmost importance during the conversion. The vehicle has been fitted with an eight-point roll cage and a six-point harness, not to mention a fire suppression system in case something goes horribly wrong.
