BMW M3 Wagon Review — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Oh, yeah. Oh, that sounds so good. Yes. Oh.

[00:12] All right. We need windows there. Here he goes. Woo. The big, big torque of the car is a... I was trying to get to 8,000 RPM, but I was moving too quick.

[00:25] I'm going to bust like John Glenn. 2000 E46 BMW M3 wagon.

[00:37] There's no such thing as an M3 wagon six-speed manual. But what if there was? What if my Nigel Thornberry got bigger every time I thrashed her? 48.8.

[00:49] Okay, I'm already in a gear that's too high. But I don't think it's going to matter. No. Ah, there it is. Oh, yeah. Oh, that sounds so good.

[01:03] Oh, whip crack, throttle response, engine noise that sounds like six sewing machines running on nitroglycerin and zinc. 8,000 RPM.

[01:16] All right. BMW owners are the closest Europe has to Corvette owners. This is my BMW 325i. And mine is unique because it is this color with this stitching on the seat.

[01:29] But I put a shift knob on it that was new old stock from Barbaria's original whirling ball tramp... I put a shift knob on that was new old stock from Barbaria's original whirling ball tampilation factory.

[01:45] Ah, I can see you're trying to get out of this conversation. So I am going to position my body between you and the Vanderhall you're trying to look at. Now I will recite to you all the locations I have driven my rare BMW to.

[02:01] Tale of the Dragon, Biscuits and Porn, Golden Age Air Museum in Bethel, Pennsylvania, White Top Mountain, Virginia, where I white topped a rubber Virginia in full view of a Mormon family.

[02:14] And now, flying domestically is difficult. This episode of Regular Car Reviews is sponsored by Brooklyn Bedding. And I can attest that this mattress proved very useful, this very bed, on the day I came home from laparoscopic hernia surgery.

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[04:19] The S54 inline-six 3.2-liter engine makes a various amount of horsepower, depending who's doing the bragging. Wikipedia says 338 horsepower at 7,900 RPM and 269 pound-feet of torque at 4,900 RPM.

[04:42] This is maybe one of the greatest, I don't know if this is the greatest engine that BMW has ever made. I love the little four-cylinders in the E30s, but this is up there. I mean, the F54, and this may not even be top five.

[04:57] This may be top three. And all of this has been swapped into a car that looks like a suburban dad owns it. Now, this original wagon, before all the swaps were done, was a mid-range automatic model,

[05:11] the kind of car for a cul dad who was convinced that he be able to retire at 38 years old and retire on his Yahoo and American Online stock As the landscapers come for their weekly lawn mowing appointment

[05:25] the dad watches through the front door-bezzled octagonal porthole window. Oh, the landscapers are here again. Oh, I could do that if I wanted to.

[05:37] I could mow the lawn if I wanted to. I'm just too busy. I'm just too busy. I'm just too busy these days. Time to go on my computer.

[05:50] http://www.federalboobs.gov slash DOJ slash Reno underscore Janet

[06:04] There are, within this car, are multitudes of changes. How many owners has this wagon had, to your knowledge?

[06:16] Three that I'm aware of. The first two, if I remember, so assuming it's three, the first two were in D.C. This car was bought as an automatic, and the first owner about five years ago swapped it,

[06:29] I guess six years ago swapped it to a manual, and then shortly thereafter sold it to the next owner, who bought it as a commuter in D.C. That was the car he learned how to drive stick on, and he only had it for a year before he decided he was kind of done with it.

[06:43] The first owner put in a ridiculously light flywheel, and the second owner did not like that. Yeah. That's one of the ones, the second you take it off, your revs fall to the floor. Correct. Except kind of.

[06:55] Even this one had the early emission system, so it would hold it for a full second to maintain emissions, and then it would just let it fall. So you couldn't shift fast, and you couldn't catch it either. That's... And then the first owner, I don't know what was...

[07:09] going on in his brain, but every, like, little thing was just broken in the car. Like, I only had one working speaker in it, so when I went to start diving into it, I found that he ended up jamming the radio plug and, like, just bent the tent.

[07:21] Oh. So I had to go find Cody Junkyard, get a new clip, put it together, and that's all it took. The rear trunk vent was glued to the window of all things. These things? Yeah, it was physically glued, so I had to take a knife and cut it off the window.

[07:34] the both the door cards were completely the mounts are just shattered so even if they were screwed down they would just flop around so I had to source new door cards like a lot of anything

[07:47] he touched just had issues and how did the swap for you begin so or rather what was the what was the spot yeah so I bought this car to replace my previous everyday car which was a 2005

[08:03] 330i. The motor was going out on it. It was a 200,000 mile car. It was a cheap price so I sold it and it became a swap car for a DHP because I was sick. Found this in DC, bought

[08:15] it for too much money. It was a 6 speed rear wheel drive E46 wagon which you don't find. And that's what I started using it for. I just started driving with it, I had fun with it. And then last year, late, yeah, early, early last year, they were, you're starting

[08:32] to get to see more issues with it. The diffs were getting really, really loud. Second gear was just popping out. Like, you would be driving around and it would just pop out of second gear, which is a known issue on the 6-speed. You have a full straight back. And, okay,

[08:50] cool. So if I'm going to be dropping a transition and maybe rebuilding and replacing a differential, I'm just going to pull the trigger and we're going to do an entry swap because I wanted a track wagon because I wanted something that would hold maybe two sets of tires, a table,

[09:06] all of my tools, and a friend, and anything else we wanted for a track. And that's essentially a start. I had a friend who just started a shop over in Gaithersburg and conveniently he just finished

[09:20] his S54 wagon clock. wagon cloth so I got to go look at his work, decide I liked it enough that I gave him my car and that was the first project for his new shop. I noticed the word Porsche appears here. Yeah. So I took the

[09:34] car to its first track day in March as a shakedown weekend just to see what the car would or wouldn't need and easily apparent in the first session where the brakes were not going to keep up. with an even driving easy, I could feel the brake fade.

[09:50] It had stock M3 brakes, which are smaller rotors than these. So these are still M3 rotors, but this was off to late model M3s. So it went from a 325 mil rotor to a 345.

[10:06] And then the caliper is off a Porsche 966 911 or a Boxster. So we ordered the adapter kit for that and just bolted it all up.

[10:18] And we'll see how these things do on track. I'm not suspecting any issues. This is a pretty common thing. And the swap to put Porsche calipers on a BMW involves what? In this case adapter brackets for all the corners You can see the lack of clearance on this guy So that more down to the rims than it is the rims That with an 8mm spacer Yeah I will be changing up these rims So

[10:46] these things do fit with 17 inch rims. These are 18. And I love my tire balls, so at some point I'll be replacing these with 17 inch rims. Did the calipers necessitate bigger wheels, or is this a style choice or a choice for you? I got these wheels for style, because

[11:02] I like the alien rims. These rims will probably bend the shock before they bend from a pothole. So I like that. And then the stock 17-inch BMW rims don't tend to fit most brakes.

[11:14] I believe it would be M3 brakes. So these are the 18-inch ones, just a little more. I noticed that these things fill the wheel wells. If I'm right, as I remember you said before, since this is not an M3,

[11:28] was there actually such thing as an M3 wagon? So BMW made a prototype, like it's in their museum. I don't know if it's the one you can go see or not, but they did a fully built one.

[11:40] And if I remember correctly, it was a marketing decision that they didn't think was going to sell or something like that. So the wheels are off of a what? Oh, yes, the wheels are off of a ZHP. And you can actually tell they're not M3 wheels because the M3 wheels look very similar.

[11:52] But these have spokes that bend inwards. so I can't run M3 wheels on this car because they're for wider fenders and those things will hit the fenders on this and this is just stock fenders

[12:04] correct they do feel really nice when you rolled in here I thought is this thing lowered like no it just has big wheels and tires on it right so when I first got the car back it had my old 17 which did fit over the original brakes

[12:17] and it was funny because you could see the speedo was off by about 10 miles an hour at highway speed because the wheels were that much smaller So these, I think, are 26 and a half inch circumference diameter tires.

[12:29] The other ones are 25. This build subverts my prejudice against BMW owners because it is executed with stealth and it improves the wagon's driving experience instead of making it worse like so many E46s

[12:46] that inevitably trickle down to more and more inept owners. You know, the kind where maintenance and quality of life improvements are ignored in the favor of eBay coilovers and Kimu M3 badges.

[13:01] Most E46s I see these days, their rattle can jobs, straight pipe monstrosities, is just annoying everybody on the Schuylkill Expressway.

[13:13] BMW E46s now in 2026 are what Fox Body Mustangs were in 2010. Just disposable stuff. They can be very nice, but it takes money to make them nice.

[13:27] Well, that's not really a correct analogy because you can't uncrap box a Fox Body no matter how much money you pour into it. And you can make an E46 good because they were good from factory.

[13:39] It's just now, in the world of used BMWs, if you want an affordable one, you have to concede that you're buying it from a scumbag, and you're going to have to un-f*** it.

[13:51] Speaking of scumbags, while I was driving this, a wild Hawkeye STI appeared, and suddenly I got the urge to race him. Feel the bike. The reason I mentioned E30.

[14:03] The bottom! The bottom! These are the first reversals of the car because if you put them into the turn, they can't open the door anymore because the chassis is flexed that much.

[14:18] Sorry, I mean, that's not the car. Okay, so there went by a matte green Hawkeye.

[14:32] Hawkeye? Was that Hawkeye? Yeah, that was a Hawkeye FDI or something, and then an Audi, I don't care, something high, and they're running pretty hot out there. Immediately, I was like, oh, okay, okay, I'll pass, too.

[14:47] BMW M3 wagon. This car is what you see after downing a fistful of Benadryl. Let's talk about the engine some more. The M division basically outdid themselves with the S54 B32 engine.

[14:59] I think BMW is better off never trying to top it. This was the last naturally aspirated straight six from the M division, bowing out in 2008 after 16 years.

[15:11] And it's crazy to think that it's been gone for longer than it was ever here. But I'm sure it'll surprise you all to know that it's as good as it's ever been, still redlining at 8,000 RPM.

[15:23] Another source says it only makes 333 horsepower and 262 pound-feet of torque. Look, there's plenty of aftermarket support for S54s. And this build works. This what-if M3 wagon works.

[15:37] It is fun. It's all holding together. But only as long as there's an inexhaustible wallet following this wagon around. M3 wagon, the official car of transactional relationships.

[15:52] BMW M3 S54 swap manual transmission swap Wagon Oh here he comes Here comes Captain Save You see a BMW M3 wagon shaking her godless turd cutter

[16:08] on the money-lined acrylic floor of Dan's Diamond Hymen. And you take her to the champagne room and fill her head with self-sabotaging promises to take her away from all this.

[16:22] Promises that involve an infinite, bottomless wallet that you don't have. You can't even afford bottomless breadsticks at Olive Garden. But sure, let's sacrifice our future stability

[16:35] in the name of Bavarian pipe dreams manifested in the real world. This is a car that should not exist. Yet I respect the hell out of our volunteer for making it. because it is ballsy and brilliant.

[16:49] And even though I wouldn't recommend undertaking this to anybody, this will drain your wallet faster than it drains your vault. And I get that money isn't everything. I really do.

[17:01] And this is going to sound crazy coming from someone who literally drives a crazy taxi. But I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze here. Like, the novelty could wear off faster than contact highs. The BMW M3 wagon is the impossibly hot girlfriend or boyfriend who tap dances on your prefrontal cortex.

[17:21] Because how are you supposed to manage impulse control when they're this hot? God, this wagon's good looking. And the wheels and the Porsche brakes and the sound it makes.

[17:34] Oh, it's pouting your lips. But how are you supposed to preserve the delusion of unconditional love when it's this expensive? It's a relationship you endure every bit as much as you enjoy it.

[17:49] I mean, most times, they're more fun than you know what to do with. But they also break through the tranquility of your life like a neighbor's dog on the one morning you get to sleep in.

[18:02] For people who like twinks, this is the type of twink who has the beautiful neutral body, not a wrinkle on them. Their skin has that pinkish healthy glow.

[18:16] Their fresh produce is enormous. And they flow more liquid than what passes beneath the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. But then you come home to work in your apartment and you find that there's a ferret running around on the ground.

[18:31] and there's an iguana in your fish tank, and the fish tank is drained, and your goldfish is in a loaves bucket with the water, and there's a parakeet that was never in here before, and it's up on top of the dresser making a butt-pond of noise,

[18:46] and your twink BMW wagon is there on the couch, looks at you and says, I did an oopsie. For all the thrills you might have, you got to hide your wallet around a person like this,

[19:00] or else they're going to buy a bunch of retired Lego sets and DoorDash tacos from a place less than a block away on your credit card. And they'll justify it by leveraging all the good memories

[19:12] or just gaslight you into believing that they know what you need better than you do. One day you'll have the guts to tell them that this isn't working and that you're slowly suffocating under the stationary mass of their irresponsibility.

[19:24] Oh, but then they'll slash those, oh those big lips and those perfect teeth oh and the silky hair sloppy hair and that smile that

[19:37] just turns up and their eyes become like planets and suddenly you're handing them whichever plastic still has a positive balance if this bmw wagon were a person it would be someone whose only

[19:50] skill is looking pathetic and fuckable. You can never love this person, not fully. You love them in the way you love a narcissistic parent, at a distance, and always with the hope that

[20:02] they might one day admit you were right about them all along. BMW M3 wagon. If it wasn't for your holes, you'd be out on the street. God, this is a good build.

[20:14] This is up there with the 2GR swapped MR2 that I drove recently as one of the best cars I've ever driven in 2026. This is perfect. It's the entire package. Fill it with tires,

[20:26] drive it to the track, kick ass on the track, and then drive home in comfort with air conditioning running and silence. I have never driven such a complete package. I'm not a BMW person, but this thing touched me. Congratulations, owner. I am literally saluting you as I'm recording this.

[20:45] This is a fantastic build. Also, go fuck yourself, because now it's in my brain. BMW M3 wagon. It didn't exist, and for a good reason it shouldn't, because this would grab every single young man's balls and make them pour.

[21:00] Woo! Go bottom! Go bottom! Either you want to move it or you want to do it first. um

[21:12] again we're doing work because it's time