It’s time to take another look at one of these old versus new drag race comparisons. This time, it’s the new M3 Competition taking on the old F80 model but with a twist. Since this would’ve been a clear race if both cars were stock, the guys from Carwow decided to spice things up a bit. Therefore, they brought along a tuned F80 M3, one that we’ve seen before as it belongs to the guys from Evolve.
As they got us used to, this is no ‘normal’ M3 and not normal either by tuning world standards. This is a 700 horsepower monster. That’s right, the S55 3.0 liter twin-turbo straightsix engine under the hood was tuned into oblivion and now makes 700 horsepower and a whopping 950 Nm of torque. All that power is sent to the rear axle alone via a seven-speed DCT gearbox which, according to Mat, makes launching it a bit of a pain.
On the other side of the drag strip we have a bone stock, pre-July 2021 production M3 Competition. That means it doesn’t have all-wheel drive and that may prove instrumental here. Nevertheless, the new M3 has the same 510 horsepower 3.0 liter straight six twin-turbo S58 engine as the AWD models to come this summer. Since it has a torque-converter eight-speed ZF gearbox, it’s also better to launch, putting the power down more efficiently.
Is that going to be enough to keep the 700 horsepower monster away? Well, depends. From a dig, the new M3 managed to win it, twice. Putting 700 horsepower down with the rear axle is truly a challenge. However, the story was a bit different when it came to the rolling races. The extra power and lower weight of the old F80 M3 truly put things into perspective but you have to check out the video to see exactly how much there was in between them.
