mrk you must be one of the few who love the sound of the S54, from the inside of a coupe it sounded a bit... odd to me. Sure, when giving it full beans it sounded great but driving normally sounded strange and wasn't the best of sounds, too raspy for me. I've mentioned this to a few other people and they felt the same.
Which year? Mine has no rasp driving normally in everyday situations - It sounds like a BMW straight 6 humming along when just cruising about at normal speeds (
example). The rasp comes in north of 3000rpm and only when you climb the revs from there fairly quickly. Like I mentioned in a reply in another thread, it can be as ambient or as needlessly asbo if you want it to be whenever just by modulating the throttle.
Thanks for all the replies.
olv: your CS looks stunning.
mrk: thanks for the info. There's absolutely no way I would make any adjustments to the appearance, I'm really not interested in having anything other than the stock look. They got it just right, in my opinion. My E36 is also unmolested, down to the orange repeaters.
I think I'm sold on the CS. Yes, it's a greater outlay, but there are too many positives for me to ignore. I can't say I'm too bothered about the loss of cruise control; I'm lucky in that I only do around 3,000 miles a year. On a less CS-specific note, this means that the SMG is more of a curiosity than a necessity, too; with a ten-minute commute over country roads, I don't spend a lot of time in traffic.
Seems sensible! The CS and CSL are investments now, while the normal one may as well be for the long haul. i don't intend to sell my car ever. It will be nice to have it in the same condition it is in today, in several years time. I'm confident that there will be even fewer nice examples out there than there already are, and this will make it feel a bit more special yet.
I don't drive mine daily, the odd times I won't have driven it for a week straight. But I do
try to drive it a few times a week at least. The accumulated mileage so far has been due to various things going on this year requiring me to travel, otherwise annual mileage is ~4000.
On the plus side, it's meant I've been able to get to know the car much better than I otherwise would have in lots of different conditions. On the negative side... Added above average annual mileage to it in the first year
[TW]Fox;28850044 said:
Well obviously not taken at face value but ultimately yes surely? Do you honestly think the E46 M3 would have been as much a hit if it didn't have the S54 in the configuration it is in? The Z4M has it too, but the engine<>exhaust configuration is somewhat different, the organic sound and metallic rasp isn't there, two of the most popular talking points for it both online and offline. It won International Engine of the Year at launch in 2001 in the M3, and then continued to win it for the 3.0 litre to 4.0 litre category for every year it was still in production.
So yeah, I do genuinely think the S54B32 is what makes the E46 M3 what it is, and it doesn't seem like I am alone either.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
