The BMW game-changer that monopolised the tin-top world

A BMW 635CSi Group A car trundled slowly around Misano with a black flag fluttering above it. This symbolic act early in December 1986 brought down the curtain on the career of a successful machine that had triumphed in that year's European Touring Car Championship. The flag indicated that the German manufacturer now understood it had a new contender, and the results of the test at the Italian track confirmed that it could challenge for outright honours.

That car was the BMW M3, a machine that would go on to win all the big championships - World, European, German and British included - over the course of the six seasons of the front-line career that followed. Factor in multiple victories at the major tin-top enduros - the Spa and the Nurburgring 24-hour races - and it's easy to understand why Autosport has named it the greatest touring car.

The test at Misano, which straddled the end of November and early December 1986, proved that BMW Motorsport had a potent Group A weapon on its hands. The first proper test of the car ran for more than a week with Roberto Ravaglia, a driver who remains synonymous with the boxy saloon, handling the driving. Only on the last of the eight days did he get any help: Ivan Capelli was brought in at Ravaglia's insistence for a mini-enduro run of 500km, the regular race distance of events in a series generally known at the time by the shortened acronym ETC.

The 635CSi showed up at the end of the test too. Schnitzer team manager Charly Lamm, whose squad was at the coalface of BMW's touring car campaigns, didn't believe the news that was filtering out of the test of the prototype M3 run by the factory's in-house operation. The mastermind of Schnitzer's successes in touring cars and sportscars over a period of nearly 40 years couldn't comprehend how a car with a 2.3-litre straight-four engine - which therefore put it in the secondary class for cars up to 2.5 litres - could be faster than the old 635 with a 3.5-litre straight-six that ran in the top division. That explains why Lamm, who died in 2019 just months after retiring, brought down a 635CSi for the final day of the test so that the two machines could undergo a back-to-back.

"We had to convince Schnitzer that the M3 was the better car," recalls Thomas Ammerschlager, head of production and development at BMW Motorsport at the time. "After we'd shown that the M3 was significantly quicker, Charly sat where the passenger seat would be with a black flag and the car ran around the track to show that it was over for the 6 Series."

Ravaglia recalls that the gap between the new challenger and the old was significant. That might explain Lamm's initial disbelief.

"I don't remember the exact lap times because it's more than 30 years ago," says the Italian, "but I think we're talking about a couple of seconds. It wasn't in the original plan to have the 635 there; it was Charly pushing to make the comparison because he wasn't convinced that the new car could be quicker."

BMW now had a machine that was faster than its predecessor over one lap as well as over a race distance courtesy of its lighter appetite for fuel and tyres. But Ammerschlager is adamant that the M3 wasn't conceived as the outright winner that it became.

If that had been the case, he argues, BMW would have followed the lead set by rivals Ford and Volvo and built a turbocharged car. And BMW Motorsport was perfectly capable of doing that: its engine guru, Paul Rosche (below), had produced his first tin-top racer with a blown powerplant, the 2002 TIK, as far back as 1969 and gone on to develop the first turbo engine to win the Formula 1 World Championship with Brabham in 1983.

The term 'homologation special' doesn't do justice to the car. It was much more than a road car loaded with bolt-on performance goodies

"The M3 wasn't thought of in that way in the first instance," says Ammerschlager. "Our view was that to produce a car capable of winning outright we would have needed a turbo. It was discussed, but it was decided not to do it."

BMW didn't just race its touring cars itself with factory teams of the ilk of Schnitzer and Bigazzi. It sold its machinery to privateers.

"We thought the M3 should be a car that was affordable for privateers and able to be raced by privateers," continues Ammerschlager. "The privateers at that time were not capable of properly maintaining a turbocharged car."

The M3 had its roots in a throwaway line from BMW chairman Eberhard von Kuenheim on one of his periodic visits to BMW Motorsport in Garching to the north of company HQ in Munich. At least that's the story recounted in an official biography of Rosche published by BMW on his retirement in 2003.

Von Kuenheim's words, according to Paul Rosche: Behind the curtains - The history of a legendary engine constructor, went something like this: "Mr Rosche, we need a new sports engine for the 3 Series range." It suggests that the company boss casually made his request as he was walking out of the door.

It was enough, however, for Rosche to begin work. He liked nothing better than rolling up his sleeves and setting to on a new project. He had a prototype M3 engine created out of the 24-valve six-cylinder M88 engine - which had powered the M1 supercar and was now found in the M635 road car - on the bench in double-quick time.

"We immediately got down to work," said Rosche - who died at the age of 82 in 2016 - in the pages of his biography. "We reminded ourselves that the six-cylinder was developed originally from a four-cylinder engine. We removed two cylinder pots from the M88 engine and bolted a plate over the hole in the engine casing. Believe it or not, within two weeks we had a quality engine for the 3 Series."

The engine was lowered into a car, and Rosche personally drove it up to von Kuenheim's apartment and handed over the keys so his boss could take a test drive. "When he came back, he said, 'Good, I like it.' And that's how the M3 came about," is how Rosche finished the story.

Von Kuenheim's request for a new engine came at a time when he was starting to push through his vision for the M-brand that we know today. BMW Motorsport would become much more than what it said above the door.

"The idea was that Motorsport would become a very different set-up to before," explains Ammerschlager, who was recruited to head up development of the M3 in May 1985, shortly after the events described above. "It was to become a development company for sporty and high-class BMWs."

The M3 certainly fitted that description. BMW Motorsport went to town on the E30-shape 3 Series, creating the new machine entirely within its own facility. The major design and development decisions were "taken by Motorsport, not the normal production planners", says Ammerschlager. "Motorsport was responsible for the whole car and the development, and probably for its winning potential," he adds.

The term 'homologation special' doesn't do justice to the car. It was much more than a road car loaded with bolt-on performance goodies. There were, of course, the flared arches to accommodate bigger wheels and tyres and a wing on the back. But the shell was also stiffened, and even the silhouette was altered in the name of aerodynamic efficiency. The raked C-pillar was conceived to make the rear wing work more effectively, explains Ammerschlager. The M3 was a racer for the road, which goes a long way to explaining why it went on to be so successful on the track.

"Its secret was that the road car was so good," says Ravaglia, who would win the one-off World Touring Car Championship, the ETC, the DTM (pictured in 1989 at Hockenheim) and the Italian Superturismo series at the wheel of the M3. "When the base car is so good, it's almost too easy to build a good racing car."

Steve Soper, who would join BMW for 1989 after a year of racing against it with Ford and the Sierra Cosworth in the WTCC, puts it more succinctly: "It was a better race car than everything else out there because the starting point was so much better."

Emanuele Pirro, who had joined BMW for a partial ETC campaign in 1986, recalls the M3 being a revelation after his first experiences in touring cars aboard the 635CSi that dated back to 1983.

"The 635 was getting old: she was a big lady and was porpoising all over the place," he recalls. "Then I got in the M3 and it was another world. Everything was happening in slow motion in the 6 Series, and then we were given this little thing that was so light and nimble, just very driveable. It was like jumping into paradise. I felt like I could drive that car with my eyes closed, that I could do anything with it, especially with slicks on a damp track.

"Driving the M3 around the Nordschleife was pretty amazing. It was such a nice and agile car to throw around that place. The same goes for Macau. You could do things with the M3 that you couldn't do with any other car" Steve Soper

"I remember at Dijon [at the 1987 WTCC round] I put the car on pole. Dijon is a pretty fast circuit, and we were giving away maybe 200bhp to the Fords. Our car had so much grip on qualifying tyres. I don't think I did anything special; it was just that the car was the perfect tool for a young kid overflowing with confidence."

The best memories Soper has of the car are from the classic circuits. It was a car to be relished on a challenging track, he says: "Driving the M3 around the Nordschleife was pretty amazing. It was such a nice and agile car to throw around that place. The same goes for Macau. You could do things with the M3 that you couldn't do with any other car."

The M3 claimed multiple championships in its maiden season. BMW junior Eric van de Poele (pictured) won the DTM, where a sliding scale of minimum weights and tyre sizes levelled up the performance of the over and under 2.5-litre cars. The Zakspeed driver didn't manage a race victory, but others did aboard the M3.

Altfrid Heger and Winnie Vogt, driving for Linder Rennsport, were victorious in the seven-round rump of the ETC left after the creation of the WTCC. Most significantly, however, the M3 triumphed in the original version of the WTCC. Ravaglia's successful title assault with Schnitzer is the foundation stone of the M3 legend.

Ravaglia prevailed over Eggenberger Ford drivers Klaus Ludwig and Klaus Niedzwiedz by a single point at the end of an 11-race season in which controversy was never far away. The new Ford RS Cosworth, which was superseded mid-season by the even-more- potent RS500, won five of the races, while the BMW took four. The BMWs, as Pirro has said, couldn't match the Fords on power, but over a 500km distance it was a different matter.

"There was no mandatory number of pitstops," recalls Ravaglia. "The fuel consumption of the Ford was much higher and it stressed its tyres more. Over the distance we were normally competitive with them; we usually made one pitstop less than them."

BMW, or at least the Schnitzer team, "went into every race believing we could win", recalls Pirro: "It didn't matter that the Ford had more power than us, we still thought we could beat them in our little BMW. That might sound arrogant, but we had this amazing car and there was such a positive spirit within the team, which was mainly down to Charly. One of his greatest abilities - and he had many - was getting the people who worked for him to perform to the maximum."

Pirro and Ravaglia picked up two of BMW's quartet of wins. Or rather that should be Ravaglia and Pirro, because the former was the established star of the team and a number one of sorts. Schnitzer had decided that its push for the title would be with the 'Speed Merchant of Venice', as Autosport described him on more than one occasion.

The races were started by Pirro, so that Ravaglia could be held back and switched to the team's sister car should his own encounter a problem. This ultimately won BMW the drivers' title and meant Pirro finished down in fourth in the final points.

Pirro retired with propshaft failure shortly before he was due to hand over to his team-mate at the Brno round in Czechoslovakia in August. Ravaglia was then switched to car started by Roland Ratzenberger, in place of Markus Oestreich. The fourth-place points he garnered as a result proved crucial at the end of the season.

The WTCC didn't make it into year two. FISA boss Jean-Marie Balestre even namechecked the BMW and the M3 when he announced the decision not to continue with the series. He suggested that the German manufacturer's "massive investment to make almost a special series of cars was not the intention" of the Group A rules. But the success of the M3 did continue with Ravaglia at the forefront.

The Italian won the ETC, now made up of a decent 11 races again, in 1988, and the DTM in 1989, both with Schnitzer. He would go on to win two more championships, in 1990 and 1991, in his Italian homeland where the little BMW had already picked up the end-of-season silveware in two of the preceding three years. Titles also fell to the M3 in Britain, Australia and France. There were five wins at the Nurburgring 24 Hours, and four at the Spa twice-around-the-clock enduro, plus a quintet of wins in the prestigious Macau Guia race.

Yet the importance of the M3 stretches beyond its successes with Schnitzer, Bigazzi, Zakspeed, CiBiEmme et al. It became a bedrock of worldwide touring car racing in the hands of customer teams.

Ammerschlager's records show that more than 330 Group A M3s were built over the car's six seasons. 'Built' is actually the wrong word. 'Produced' would be better, because it was up to the customer to build the car from a kit that arrived from Munich.

Pirro puts the M3 into the top three cars he drove during his long career with the all-conquering McLaren-Honda MP4/4 1988 Formula 1 car and the Audi R8 LMP1

"The kit came with everything down to the last washer," recalls Malcolm Swetnam, who managed the Prodrive-run squad backed by BMW UK that won the 1988 British Touring Car Championship with Frank Sytner (pictured). "And woe betide you if there was a washer left over at the end. You'd have to find where that washer went. It was ruthlessly efficient, typically German."

BMW continued to develop the M3 through its lifespan. The first evolution allowed under Group A rules, which involved the building of an extra 500 cars in addition to the 5000 standard cars demanded, arrived at the start of the maiden season, the second in time for the beginning of 1988. The third, the Evolution Sport, came on stream in 1990 and included a new engine taken out to 2.5 litres, and bigger arches to accommodate 18in diameter wheels. The aerodynamics became ever more extreme: the final evo version of the car incorporated a bigger rear wing and an adjustable splitter at the front.

"The M3 just got better and better; each year there was always a step forward, whether it was an evolution or just development tweaks through the year," says Soper. "Every racing driver wants more performance, more power, and we got that with the M3."

The M3 was still winning into the 1990s, but it also had an important role to play as touring car racing turned its back on homologation specials, of which it was perhaps the ultimate example. The car was an important building block of what became the phenomenally successful Super Touring formula.

Jonathan Ashman - one of the architects of the two-litre formula conceived for the BTCC and then adopted by the FIA - remembers bending his own rules to allow the M3 in reduced-capacity form to race in the British series in its first full year running to the new rules.

"The rules were devised for four or five-door cars, because every manufacturer had one, but we said that if the silhouette was the same for a two-door, it could still race," explains Ashman, who'd sought a new path for touring car racing in the UK after joining governing body the RAC MSA (now Motorsport UK) as its events boss. "The M3 didn't quite fit, but we needed cars on the grid for the first couple of years."

Will Hoy and the Vic Lee Racing squad put a second BTCC crown to the M3's CV to go with Sytner's 1988 triumph. That first one had been claimed in the days when the highest-scoring driver from the championship's four classes was awarded the title. James Weaver nearly repeated the trick for Prodrive the following year; he missed the overall crown by a single point as he swept to the Class B title.

The M3 was a successful and important car in the history of touring car racing, but it was also a much-loved machine. Pirro puts the M3 up among the best cars he drove during his long career. It makes it into his top three, in fact. It's in exalted company, because the other two are the all-conquering McLaren-Honda MP4/4 1988 Formula 1 car, in which he completed tens of thousands of miles of testing, and the Audi R8 LMP1 (nee LMP900), a machine that took five Le Mans 24 Hours wins, three of them with him at the wheel.

"Just such a great car," he says. "The best touring car of its time."

For Ravaglia, who fittingly took the final DTM wins for the M3 at the 1992 series finale at Hockenheim, it is simply the car that made him.

"I would not have won so many races and championships without it," he says. "For sure not."