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10% is roughly 350lbs? It's not unheard of if you're building a race-car (although a 3,100 lbs race car is still quite the fat pig. Just ask Scott Cary who runs a 135i in BMW CCA Club Racing).
First, lets look at some of the more obvious weight savings. First, the seats themselves weigh about 65-90 lbs, depending on option. Replacing both front seats with lightweight race buckets could save anywhere from 40-70 lbs per seat. Let's just go conservative and say you save 80 lbs total with 2 CF Sparcos. Battery weighs about 50 lbs, a light weight gel type batter can weigh as little as 20 lbs. That's another 30 lbs there. Right there you save about 100 lbs.
BMW OEM wheels weight about 24 lbs. Run flat tires weight about 30 lbs. If you were to go with a light-weight forged 18" wheel, there's potential to shave 5 lbs from each corner on wheel alone, and swapping out for a traditional tire like a Michelin PS2 could yield another 5 lbs of saving. So far we're up to a total of 140 lbs (almost half way there).
Now things get progressively harder. You can remove the rear seat padding if you have no need for rear passengers. The seat base and back weighs about 40 lbs total. Dash and the stuffing underneath the dash weighs about 30 lbs. Door panels weigh about 15 lbs each. If you remove all that you lose another 100 lbs (we're now up to 240!)
If you can live without the audio system, you can remove all the speakers, the head unit, and all the associated wiring for another 20 lbs or so. You can go with light-weight fabricated aluminum bumper supports and replace the 5mph bumper shocks with lightweight CF or aluminum rods for another 10 lbs of saving. Now comes the REALLY hard part. All the interior sound deadening can be removed to save another 40 lbs. AC condenser and compressor weighs another 15 lbs total. A lightweight, custom fabricated cat-back exhaust can save you anther 15-20 lbs.
There. ~340 lbs and we haven't even had to replace any body panels with CF.
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