Our 2015 BMW M3 Struggled with Life on the Street
From the August 2016 issue of Car and Driver.
BMW has been unafraid to tailor its M3 to the times. Over the past 29 years, the M3’s cylinder counts and transmission choices and even body styles have changed. These moves have had corresponding effects on comfort, luxury, and reliability, yet the M3 has always maintained its status as a no-compromise machine. Each of its five generations has offered a slightly different balance between street and track performance, with the underlying idea that this car could excel spectacularly at both disciplines. But after spending 17 months with the latest M3, we’ve come away thinking that Munich’s scales need recalibrating.
The M3 is still a wonderful performer; it puts up numbers as easily as LeBron James playing pickup at the Cleveland YMCA. At the end of our test, the M3 ran 12.4 seconds in the quarter-mile at 116 mph, pulled 1.01 g’s on our skidpad, and stopped from 70 mph in 155 feet, excellent figures that are essentially unchanged from the car as new.
Its 425-hp twin-turbocharged inline-six accelerates with a ferocity to match anything on the street. Ditto the ease with which the driver can summon oversteer with a mash of the throttle. Testing director Don Sherman said it succinctly: “The M3 is lovely to drive flat-out.” If we had put 40,000 miles on the car strictly with lapping sessions or on manicured canyon roads, we might have come away with a different opinion. Alas, subjected to normal road use, the M3 was often frustrating.
Our M3 is comfortable hanging with its racy brethren. We just wish it were more comfortable in the real world.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
It started with the $81,425 sticker price. Maybe if this had been a psychologically more appealing $79,995, the logbook commenters wouldn’t have spent so much time grumbling about the expense, which was smeared over every other complaint like so much proverbial icing. (“For $80K?! No.”) Our well-established disappointment with BMW’s latest F30 3-series and vivid memories of the outstanding previous-generation M3, with its high-revving V-8, didn’t help. Surely, we thought, throwing this much money at the 3-series would make it wonderful. Not so.
“This is a car that demands respect from every competitor that dares to challenge the performance, reputation, and value represented here.” —Don Sherman, testing director
Hindsight says that we should not have loaded up our car with $18,475 in options. With a base price of just $62,950, trimming the bill of sale would have been simple. We could have saved $8150 by sticking with the cast-iron brake discs rather than the pricey carbon ceramics; spent $1200 less by going with standard 18-inch wheels; and cut another $1000 by forgoing the adaptive suspension. Not only would those choices have dropped the MSRP by more than $10K, the resultant car would have better suited us and the cratered, third-world goat paths we call roads here in the Midwest. It might have fared better, and probably stopped better—or, at least, with less drama. So blame some of the following on our decision to test the car fully outfitted.
Upon arrival, our M3 beguiled even as it sat. Its Yas Marina Blue over cream (“Silverstone”) palette did much to distract us from the humdrum and dated 3-series interior. A fierce face, flat and stretched low to the ground, looks the business, and no carmaker has such a flair for flared fenders as BMW. Aesthetically, the M3 benefits immensely from those huge wheel arches, absent on its M4 coupe sibling. And look at the way that carbon-fiber roof sparkles in the sunlight. Suffice it to say that nobody would utter a word of criticism about the car’s looks during its tenure here.
Our issues were more subdermal. On cold startups the M3’s muffler was loud, but not a good loud, not the Jaguar F-type’s or Dodge Hellcat’s joyful noise. The exhaust rattled like one of those YouTube videos where they destroy an iPhone in a blender, and at a volume that would only be acceptable if the car were parked in a paddock rather than our driveways. Thus, four months into the test, we had the dealer investigate and then replace an actuator in the muffler. Then we took the car back several months later to have the actuators worked on some more. Then the dealer replaced the muffler itself. The car is still cacophonous at cold start, though quieter.
Once underway there’s plenty of road noise from the M3’s Michelins, but the engine, aided by the extra tones that BMW Active Sound pumps through the audio system, roars above it. The M3 pulls like an ox all the way to redline, meaning that even without downshifting from sixth it has plenty of passing power.
If only the car rode better. We’ve criticized the standard 3-series for being too soft, with insufficient wheel control, but the M3 is like Papa Bear’s chair. Maybe it was the 19-inch wheels, but none of the adaptive suspension’s settings delivered a “just right” ride quality. “You never forget that you’re driving a hard-core sports sedan,” wrote online copy chief Rusty Blackwell.
Even set to comfort, the M3 has the compliance of a race car. It pounds heavily over cracked pavement and freeway expansion joints, magnifying every imperfection in the road. We’d swear the chassis even gets jostled by painted lane markings and the shadows of telephone poles. And the ride got worse as the miles piled up. “The more I drive this as it gets older, the more I dislike how much it crashes over bumps,” wrote copy editor Jennifer Harrington after returning from a road trip.
By the end of our test, enough shock waves had been sent through the car that the interior had accumulated more rattles than Babies “R” Us. There was a time when BMW tuned every M car’s suspension right to the threshold of harshness without crossing over into unacceptably firm. Now, with adjustable suspensions predominant in its portfolio, the company seems to have lost sight of where that magic mark is.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
The multitude of adjustments offered for not just the suspension but also for the steering and throttle drew no raves. Some drivers complained that the three steering settings only dialed up effort but did nothing to improve road feel, which, as in other recent BMWs, is lacking. Others grumbled about not being able to turn off the rev-matching feature of the M3’s six-speed manual transmission, save for selecting the most aggressive sport-plus throttle mapping, the one you’d use at the track.
Fitted with the optional carbon-ceramic brake package, our M3 was prepped for pit lane. Race-car brakes produced race-car stops, but also race-car scares. When cold and wet, say just after leaving a car wash on a winter day, our M3’s brakes would sometimes go absolutely numb, the pedal becoming rock hard with no sensation of friction. A quick pumping of the pedal returned braking feel, but not without first eliciting abject panic from the driver.
After experiencing this more than once, one of our staffers insisted that he was going to start carrying a spare pair of underwear in the glovebox. As shocking as glovebox underwear can be, what’s even more galling is that, according to BMW, this is the way the brakes are supposed to work. There’s even a page of explanation in the owner’s manual. At least the brake pads ($828 for all four corners) should outlast the car, as they lost less than 0.02 inch of friction material in 40,000 miles.
Our striking Yas Marina Blue M3 came alive on abandoned back roads. When cold and wet, the optional carbonceramic brakes occasionally played dead.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
Our dealer displayed a similar nothing-to-see-here attitude when, late in the test, we started experiencing a noise coming from the front end of the car during left-hand turns. It seemed like a vibration of some sort and sounded like Chewbacca, which made it more amusing than most hard-to-diagnose noises. After some back-and-forth with the service department, which was unable to reproduce the problem and insisted nothing was wrong, we gave up.
In fact, some of us even gave up on driving the M3. When we tallied its mileage and compared it with our last long-term M3, we found that we’d been averaging nearly 500 fewer miles per month than we put on the 2008 model. So much for this being the enthusiasts’ poster child, the car that you pry out of our cold, dead hands. But the M3 was inexpensive to keep on the road, with BMW covering service costs for four years or 50,000 miles (downgraded to three years or 36,000 miles for 2017).
Maybe the next owner of our long-term M3 will be able to troubleshoot the Wookiee under the fender. Perhaps he will be more tolerant of the M3’s flinty ride. Or better yet, he could just convert it to a full-time track toy; the car is probably ready to assume that life anyway, and the track is where this M3 belongs.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
Rants and Raves
“Everyone hates this car for what it isn’t, rather than liking it for what it is.”
—K.C. Colwell
“Look, M3. I still respect you, I do. But I don’t love you anymore. Regards, Dan.”
—Daniel Pund
“This is a nice car and the power and response are intoxicating, but I’m never really sad to get out of it and I never miss it.”
—Mike Sutton
“Even in the comfort setting, the dampers aren’t what I’d call comfortable.”
—Rusty Blackwell
“I wish this were more like an E36 or E46, with one suspension tune and one steering setup.”
—Erik Johnson
“Wow, rain on a carbon-fiber roof is loud.”
—Jared Gall
“This car is dangerously fun to drive.”
—Carolyn Pavia-Rauchman
“The engine and the view over the domed hood are underrated. Everything else about this car is overrated.”
—Alex Stoklosa
“I enjoy the sound, sometimes, but it does get a little obnoxious. I don’t know how much of it is artificial noise coming through the speakers, but I’m going to guess a lot.”
—Jennifer Harrington
Belly of the Beast
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
001: Active exhaust amps up the decibels under certain conditions. It made our M3 sound like a 15-year-old beater at startup.
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002: With optional carbon ceramics, the brake pads seemingly last forever, but occasionally fail to bite when cold and wet.
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003: While its origins were never confirmed, we believe the “space sasquatch” lives in the steering rack.
WHAT WE LIKE: Driving the M3 on great, twisty, traffic-free roads with high speed limits on the way to the track for an all-day lapping session.
WHAT WE DON’T LIKE: That the above scenario never, ever happens, at least not for us. Instead, living with the M3 means enduring the drama of its carbon-ceramic brakes, which repeatedly frighten us when they get wet and pedal feel vanishes, even as BMW is adamant that they are working properly. It also means suffering a loud, bone-jarring ride that cannot be ameliorated, even by switching the adjustable suspension into Comfort mode. It means listening to the muffler do its best impersonation of a garbage disposal filled with rocks when we start the car in the morning, even after multiple visits to service. It means that by this time in our test, some editors are as tired of the car as the car is tired, even if we all still love the way it looks and performs.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
WHAT WENT WRONG: Much creaking and groaning and other perplexing noises have yielded few solutions. We’ve had the muffler worked on three times now, trying to get the exhaust flaps and actuators to function properly. It may be fixed or it may not; we’re not really sure what an M3 should sound like on cold startup, but if this is it, it’s too loud and unpleasant. The service department hasn’t been able to troubleshoot a howling noise we’ve been hearing intermittently when turning to the left at lower speeds. It sounds like Chewbacca is trapped under the hood, and different staffers have ascribed it to the steering rack, the brakes, or the suspension. The dealer did successfully cure a ticking noise we experienced under hard cornering by replacing both front wheel bearings.
WHERE WE WENT: The M3 ferried some staffers to Joliet, Illinois, one weekend to drive in a LeMons race, but otherwise it’s been relegated to commuter duty. Note that we have not exactly been passing over the M3 in favor of even more exciting long-term vehicles for traveling. Other smaller, less studly cars in the fleet—our Volkswagen Golf and GTI and our Mazda 3 come to mind—have been regularly signed out for road trips ahead of the M3. See comments above about the flinty ride.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
Months in Fleet: 13 months
Current Mileage: 30,299 miles Average Fuel Economy: 22 mpg
Fuel Tank Size: 15.8 gal Fuel Range: 350 miles
Service: $0 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0
WHAT WE LIKE: With radar detectors suctioned to its windshield (and/or Waze running on our phones), the M3 continues to impress as a comfortable high-speed highway cruiser. Yes, the ride is a bit stiff, even with the suspension in Comfort mode, but we imagine this would be less of an issue if Michigan’s worthless state legislature would come up with a plan to fix our terrible roads. The M3’s passing power, particularly in sixth gear, is surprising. Not needing to downshift to overtake lethargic left-lane squatters doesn’t mean we don’t do it anyway, as working the shift lever is one of the great joys of driving this car.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
WHAT WE DON’T LIKE: The rev-matching feature of the transmission has our staff divided, but we’re in agreement that there should be a better way to turn it on and off than selecting the Sport+ mode that causes hair-trigger throttle response and unpleasant driveline lash while puttering around town. Also, that amazing passing power in sixth gear comes at the expense of fuel economy, thanks to gearing that’s unnecessarily short. Considering we routinely see more than 30 mpg on the highway in our long-term Corvette, there’s no good reason the M3 couldn’t perform similarly.
WHAT WENT WRONG: We made our first visit to the dealer after we started feeling a vibration through the steering wheel and a pulling to the right. Rebalancing all four tires cured the problem and lightened our wallets by $127.06. While we had the car in the service department we mentioned the loud exhaust on cold startup. The techs discovered excessive play in one of the exhaust actuators and replaced it under warranty. Shortly thereafter, we had a tire go mysteriously flat overnight, but finding nothing wrong with neither wheel nor tire, we’re going to blame Minions. (You annoying little creatures owe us $17 for a new tire-inflator kit.) On a positive note, our issues with the carbon-ceramic brakes have disappeared now that the weather is nice again.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
WHERE WE WENT: In addition to its daily commuter duties, we’ve driven the M3 south to make an appearance at the Louisville, Kentucky, cars and coffee. And it went even farther south to Tail of the Dragon, a worthwhile detour en route to a wedding in Huntsville, Alabama.
Months in Fleet: 9 months
Current Mileage: 23,464 miles Average Fuel Economy: 22 mpg
Fuel Tank Size: 15.8 gal Fuel Range: 350 miles
Service: $0 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0
WHAT WE LIKE: Pretzels, Wilco, snowboarding, Harry Potter, Tetris . . . oh, this is supposed to be what we like about our BMW M3? Our logbook has started out light on the compliments, which mostly involve the comfortable seats and the bright headlights. Many of us are still getting over both the direction the M3 has taken and the price. One editor, who has proclaimed himself the M3’s biggest fan, has accused the rest of us of being so focused on what the car isn’t that we are failing to recognize the good things it offers. Like stinking-fast speed, bestowed by a turbo engine that pulls all the way to redline. And the other day a bystander shouted, “What a crazy blue for that BMW! That’s crispy, man!” Always on the lookout for new and interesting ways to describe cars, we are pleased to add this adjective to our lexicon.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
WHAT WE DON’T LIKE: There is a freight rail line that runs just behind our office, about 20 yards from our parking lot. We mention this because on cold startup, the M3’s inline-six not only sounds like a ragged inline-three but it also will drown out the trains as they rumble by. Then there is the issue of the exhaust sound inside the car, where BMW’s Active Sound technology causes it to emanate from the speakers. This bothers us to the point that we have, on occasion, pulled the fuse for the entire audio system, thus banishing from the cockpit not only the artificial exhaust sound but also Howard Stern. We’re planning on seeing what we can do to kill the engine-sound “enhancement” without giving up the entertainment functions to which an audio system ought to be limited.
WHAT WENT WRONG: We’ve experienced some strange behavior from the carbon-ceramic brakes, which have on occasion felt like they were not biting correctly, particularly in cold and wet weather. On initial application the pedal goes hard, dramatically increasing the perceived effort required to slow the car. The M3 owners’ manual describes something similar but suggests that the “reduced braking effect . . . can be compensated for if necessary by pressing the brake pedal harder.” Excellent advice. In our experience, reapplying brake pressure causes the pedal to behave normally.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
WHERE WE WENT: Nowhere more interesting than a hunting-season trip to deer (beer) camp in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula. In fact, the M3 has yet to leave the state.
Months in Fleet: 4 months
Current Mileage: 9082 miles Average Fuel Economy: 21 mpg
Fuel Tank Size: 15.8 gal Fuel Range: 330 miles
Service: $0 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0
We’d like to publicly thank Kim Kardashian for attempting to break the internet in advance of us announcing our 2015 10Best Cars list. Prior to her Lexus-like stress test, we had concerns about what might happen when we dropped the BMW 3-series from our roster. Thankfully, it appears that the internet cannot be broken so easily as our hearts.
While we are collectively saddened that BMW no longer builds the car so many of us believed to be nearly perfect, we’ve written that story already, once or twice. We’re over it now. BMW, on the other hand, still has romantic aspirations. (Not to mention cars to sell and an enthusiast reputation to maintain.) So the newest addition to our long-term fleet is an M3 in Yas Marina Blue ($550) over Silverstone leather (no cost). It is a gorgeous color combination, one familiar to our editorial staff because an identical car showed up at 10Best this year, where it did garner many admirers. Just not enough of them.
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
If this $81,425 sports sedan cannot win over the holdouts, it won’t be for lack of equipment. You can load up an M3 with few additional features beyond those fitted to our tester. The Executive package ($4300) bundles some things—satellite radio, passive entry, and parking sensors—that by all rights should be standard and other amenities that define the term “optional,” like a head-up display and a heated steering wheel. That box was begrudgingly ticked. Fortunately the LED lighting package ($1900) stands alone, allowing us to choose it without also including Driver Assistance Plus ($1900) and its TV studio’s worth of side- and top-view cameras. Our car, however, does have more kit: carbon-ceramic brakes ($8150), an adjustable suspension ($1000), 19-inch wheels ($1200), a Harman/Kardon surround-sound audio system ($875), and enhanced Bluetooth integration ($500). In the interest of purity, or what passes for it these days, we left off the sunroof (no cost), dual-clutch automatic transmission ($2900), and self-parking feature ($500).
MARC URBANO, MICHAEL SIMARI
Foregoing the automatic means foregoing some performance, but the enjoyment we’ll get out of shifting for ourselves should more than make up for it over the long haul. Our M3 was delivered under its own power, driven here rather than trucked. So with more than 1000 miles on the odometer, it was well broken-in before we took it to the track, where its 0-to-60-mph run ended at four seconds flat, three-tenths behind the dual-clutch M4 we recently tested. That deficit was maintained after our long-termer’s 12.3-second quarter-mile. Stopping from 70 mph in the M3 took 157 feet, which is good, but not as great as the 1.01 g’s the car pulled on the skidpad.
Initial logbook commentary on the M3 includes praise for its well-bolstered seats, although many have expressed concern about the upholstery. The off-white leather is pretty, but our staff is not known for exercising particularly meticulous care of anything and we fully expect that this interior will be far more off than white after 40,000 miles. We’re less sure what might happen to the consensus formed during our 10Best evaluation. As unanimously pleased as we were with the M3’s quickness and tenacity, we were also disappointed by the clinical nature of its thrills. The car is overbearing on a first encounter, and it remains to be seen if an extended stay will temper that impression.
Months in Fleet: 1 month
Current Mileage: 3432 miles Average Fuel Economy: 20 mpg
Fuel Tank Size: 15.8 gal Fuel Range: 315 miles
Service: $0 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0
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Specifications
VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan
PRICE AS TESTED: $81,425 (base price: $62,950)
ENGINE TYPE: twin-turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 24-valve inline-6, aluminum block and head, direct fuel injection
Displacement: 182 cu in, 2979 cc
Power: 425 hp @ 7300 rpm
Torque: 406 lb-ft @ 1850 rpm
TRANSMISSION: 6-speed manual
DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 110.7 in
Length: 184.5 in
Width: 73.9 in Height: 56.1 in
Curb weight: 3559 lb
PERFORMANCE: NEW
Zero to 60 mph: 4.0 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 9.0 sec
Zero to 150 mph: 23.0 sec
Rolling start, 5-60 mph: 4.8 sec
Top gear, 30-50 mph: 6.3 sec
Top gear, 50-70 mph: 4.9 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 12.3 sec @ 116 mph
Top speed (governor limited): 163 mph
Braking, 70-0 mph: 157 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 1.01 g
PERFORMANCE: 40,000 MILES
Zero to 60 mph: 4.1 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 9.0 sec
Zero to 150 mph: 23.0 sec
Rolling start, 5-60 mph: 4.7 sec
Top gear, 30-50 mph: 6.3 sec
Top gear, 50-70 mph: 5.0 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 12.4 sec @ 116 mph
Top speed (governor limited): 163 mph
Braking, 70-0 mph: 155 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 1.01 g
FUEL ECONOMY:
EPA combined/city/hwy: 20/17/26 mpg
C/D observed: 22 mpg
Unscheduled oil additions: 1 qt
WARRANTY:
4 years/50,000 miles bumper to bumper;
4 years/50,000 miles powertrain;
12 years/unlimited miles corrosion protection;
4 years/unlimited miles roadside assistance;
4 years/50,000 miles free routine maintenance
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Jeff Sabatini
Features Editor
Jeff Sabatini has written for many publications over his 20 years in automotive journalism, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Sports Car Market magazine. His lifetime car churn includes 30 vehicles: eight GM cars, five Ford products, four Toyotas, three BMWs, two Jeeps, two Chrysler minivans, a Miata, a Mercedes, a Porsche, a Saab, a Subaru, and a Volkswagen.
