Wrap-up: 2009 BMW M3 Long-Term Test – “a discounted supercar”
Car and Driver calls it “The Perfect Sports Car”, Edmunds labels it as “a discounted supercar”, and many other automotive magazine have praised it in the past. The BMW M3 Sedan is the car in question and Edmunds follows up on their long-term test drive with the wrap-up story.
After 19,358 miles, a depreciation of $20,100 or 29 percent of original paid price and a True Market Value at service end of $47,270, the following statement remains: “The M3 isn’t an overpriced 3 Series; it’s a discounted supercar. In an age when raw automotive excellence is disappearing from showrooms faster than manual transmissions, this Bimmer stands apart.”
Here is the intro story:
BMW is infallible, especially when it comes to cars with the vaunted M badge. At least that’s what the fanboys say.
So we were a little confused and a little disconcerted the first time we hopped into this 2009 BMW M3 Sedan and its 414-horsepower 4.0-liter V8 settled into an idle beneath the hood in front of us. Alistair Weaver, our regular European contributor, told us in the First Drive of this car, “The 2008 BMW M3 surprises you. Its 4.0-liter V8 is quiet — possibly too quiet — and settles to a lazy, subdued burble. It’s obviously a very different kind of engine than the inline-6 that powered the old M3, and for a moment you wonder if the gang at BMW M have botched up the world’s finest high-performance coupe.”
And so the fanboys have begun to secretly suspect that each new M iteration of the 3 Series has actually been less pure, less driver-focused and less M than the one that preceded it. And when it comes to the transition from the traditional inline-6 to the meaty (yet 33 pounds lighter) V8, the diehards get rabid.
Purity? Tradition? Forget that, because by changing the equation, BMW has created in the 2009 BMW M3 Sedan what is possibly the best sedan ever made.
Continue reading the most detailed report we have seen on the 2009 BMW M3 Sedan.
