![]() ![]() “Without his blessing, this wouldn’t have happened,” Wensberg notes. He went out on a limb to give them the car they desired. Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, head of BMW’s motorsports department back home in Germany, listened to the Americans. “World-class performance that you could drive everyday–that was our credo,” Wensberg explains. “To Vic Doolan’s credit, he took it very seriously,” he adds.īMW North America had one more request for its M3: an optional automatic transmission, a first for a BMW M product. He delivered those letters to Vic Doolan, then president of BMW North America. The membership replied enthusiastically, sending in hundreds of letters. Roemer, at the time a very influential columnist for the Roundel, the BMW CCA’s club magazine, challenged his readers to prove that an American market existed. “We had a letter-writing campaign orchestrated by Bob Roemer,” Wensberg explains. Would customers even buy an M3 in the first place? The American arm of the company had some work to do. “All of a sudden, we got some traction on a car costing $35,000 instead of $55,000.” To save $20,000, that difference in performance in the American market was “inconsequential,” Wensberg adds. The deficit would only be two-tenths of a second. “They were not happy to hear this.”īMW North America knew that 70 percent of past M Division sales came in urban markets, and computer simulations showed that a simplified M3 would be nearly as quick to 60 mph as its Euro-market sibling. So the BMW North American product development team asked for an M3 sporting a conventional cylinder head and intake setup. “It was simply a car carrying too big of a penalty,” he continues. The solid lifters would have required regular adjustments, while the M3 was expensive to insure in its home market. There were other expenses to consider, too. If sold here in European trim, the M3 would have retailed for about $55,000–about $20,000 too high, Wensberg adds. BMW wanted to position the M3 against the Nissan 300ZX, Mazda RX-7 and various pony cars. One small problem: BMW North America simply saw the Euro-spec M3 as too expensive, too complicated for the American market, Wensberg explains. The award-winning coupe would finally come stateside for the 1995 model year. The E36-chassis M3 was released in Europe in 1992. ![]()
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