Yahoo Autos This Twenty-Year-Old BMW M3 Has Lost More Than One Horsepower Per Year
To a car enthusiast on a budget, a used BMW M3 is an incredibly appealing proposition in theory, but in practice, it might not live up to expectations. Back in the day, the E36 M3 was one of the best performance cars you could buy (especially in its more powerful European spec), but today, it's a used car, which means it'll have typical used car problems.
The guys at CarThrottle took their old M3 to a dyno to see how much power it lost since it was new, and to try to find a way to remedy it. In UK-spec, the E36 M3 made 317 horsepower when new, but CarThrottle's 130,000-mile example only managed 279 horsepower on its best run. The dyno tech said that with a valve clearance fix, this car would likely pull 300 horsepower.
In any case, 279 is nearly 40 more horsepower than the North American-spec E36 M3 offered when new, and it still sounds pretty fantastic when Alex from Car Throttle performs an unscientific 0-60 run.
