I'll be honest, I love German performance cars. It's something about their attention to detail and unrelenting power delivery that can't be beat. That is, until you slap a race-tuned American V8 powerplant in one, gut the interior, and paint it matte orange. Oh, and put it up for sale to us mere mortals.
This 2000 BMW Z3 M Coupe started life as a run-of-the-mill performance car with around 240 horsepower on tap from its 3.2 liter inline 6. That, apparently was not good enough. Here's what was done to this car over the course of its life, according to the seller:
I bot the car in 2002 with 29000mi. It has 71500 miles on the body today and every bushing and seal has been replaced during the track build.
The carbon fiber hood, roof and bumper / splitter were made by Trinity Motorsports / Sean Bayliff who built the Cannon Ball Run s62powered M Coupe. The Cage and safety preparation was done by Deman Motorsports ( Grand Am and Tudor GS wining Race Team). The LS2 motor and T 56 Transmission has 30,000 miles on it. The conversion was done with the best of parts through Vorshlag in Dallas. TX.
The car was tuned by Chuck Cow of Corvette of Westchester and puts down 425 RWHP / 440 tq with cam, headers, hi flow ceramic cats and custom exhaust installed by Rogue Engineering.
Every window is custom molded lexan except for the windscreen. car comes with 2 sets of wheels. I set of ARC and the other VSL. Brakes are from C6 Grand Sport with 2 piece rotors.
Suspension has custom valved Koni ( recently rebuilt ) to match springs. Front control arms are from SLR. All bushings have been replaced with either heim joints or 75d hard poly. The rear wing is a Brooks Elite.
No expense was spared in this car. If you are looking for a real drivers car that is light, sorted and has a fast and reliable power train married to a unique platform...then you are looking at the right car.
I think you get the point. Car weighs 2700lbs and has 425 at wheels. Tons of grip and aero. Auto-x, Time Attack, HPDE what ever your passion.
Buy this car for a fraction of what it would cost to build. I an setting at a reasonable reserve price. Its worth every bit of 80k+ to build a car like this plus 100 of hours in sourcing the materials and planning the build. There is not a scratch on the car. But it is a track monster and should be purchased for that purpose only.
At the Buy It Now Price, I'm not sure it's worth the premium over a regular clownshoe, as it wouldn't likely appreciate due to the extensive modifications, but it would literally run circles around any stock Z3 M Coupe in existence. I'd consider it, if only to have something completely insane in my garage just to show myself that life is worth living.
If you want more crazy horsepower per dollar, check these out:
Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes about buying and selling cool cars on the internet. He owns the world's cheapest Mercedes S-Class, a graffiti-bombed Lexus, and he's the only Jalopnik author that has never driven a Miata. He also has a real name that he didn't feel was journalist-y enough so he used a pen name and this was the best he could do.