10-04-2019, 09:47 PM | #1 |
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Is 1M worth of giving up E92 M3?
Hey guys, so I have 2013 STI as a daily which I have really fun driving and E92 M3 as a weekend car sitting at 28,000 miles AW manual comp pack.
I've had m3 for about 2 years, but more I drive it, more I feel how heavy M3 is. Yes, V8 growls and M3 looks great in terms of proportion and it does catch people's eyes for sure. I used to drive 128i, so I know how fun E82 chassis is and that is why I'm contemplating whether I should sell M3 and get 1M as a weekend. All my car friends are telling to go get GT4 since 1M is really really close to 981 GT4 price now like $10,000~$20,000. What's your guys' opinion? I can't own 3 cars atm and I kinda like driving STI as a daily, so I only have a choice of either keeping M3 or swapping M3 for 1M. |
10-05-2019, 11:54 AM | #4 |
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Hi,
Completely agree about M3’s sound and looks. Everything else is okay to get over. Hands down 1m. After driving 1m I absolutely cant stand the M3. Shifting is awful, like changing gears in military truck. Heavy as well. 1m is like butterfly, super fun and light. My wife used to have 128 and she still craves it. 1m no doubt. Sell your m3. |
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10-05-2019, 01:10 PM | #6 | |
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I still love the look of the E90 M3 and I could see getting one some day but the 1M is just more engaging around town in my humble opinion. The shifter is better, the clutch is light and good. People complain about N54 reliability which is usually injectors and maybe turbos but E90s, have bearing issues, throttle actuator issues and others also. I still prefer a good NA motor over a turbo, but that motor would've been better served in a lighter car where the low torque wouldn't be as big a factor. Anyway, the 1M is not perfect. It has turbo lag and takes some throttle discipline. It is a much more hard edged car than the M3. It only has a very firm fixed suspension however, it is actually great with 18" wheels and tires. The 1M might not be for you, you HAVE to drive one and decide for yourself. If you want a weekend car, that is one nice thing about the 1M, they hold their value well for low mileage cars. In 2013, during the California recession, I sold my first 1M and went on the market later and planned to get something else. I bought a 2003 ZHP MT which is feel is the greatest family car ever made for car enthusiasts and started to look at e90 M3s again. I would swoon when I saw an I.B. E90 M3 sedan but once I drove them, the same thing happened. It just felt a bit heavy and a bit big still so I loved looking at them and listening to it but driving it around town just didn't match the visual and aural components. I also started to test the 228i, 235i, M2, F80 M3 and nothing quite did it for me for various reasons so finally I gave up and searched for a low mileage 1M. I found one in Canada and imported it. Even with the Canadian savings, it still cost me more than what I paid for my new one in 2011! That was 2015 and that car is still in my garage. As I said it is not perfect. The default traction control is awful. The car has so much torque that it kicks in the traction control immediately and you are constantly getting the blinking light. On the other hand, you are walking away with the car in one piece because it can catch you offguard sometimes. The M Dynamic mode is amazing. It's as if BMW left the regular 135i traction control in the 1M and only worked on the MDM. I wish I could code the MDM on all the time. I have even autocrossed my first 1M in MDM and it is great but you have to turn it on every time you want. Another thing with the 1M is that it is almost an organism. It's like a person that has good days and bad days. Some days it just feels "fast" but not "crazy fast" and you get lulled and used to power then some days, usually on a cool morning, you push the trottle with commitment like you have done hundreds of times before and the thing takes off on you, usually in second gear, and for a few hundreds to a second you are "behind" the car....if you know what I mean. Sometimes you go around a corner one way and then another time it behaves a little differently. Many have panned this trait. My ZHP is like the Silver, the Lone Ranger's horse. It does everything exactly as I expect when I want it to. I whitstle and it trots over to me and eagerly does what I tell it to do. The 1M is more like recently broken mustang (the horse not the car)...most of the time it does what you tell it but periodically it will do what it wants and you don't tell it what to do, you ask it what to do. While this trait is not what BMWs are known for and considered a bad trait, it has had one unplanned side effect, that Chris Harris has pointed out succintly...it has a bad boy demeanor that you never quite get comfortable with it. So while people want their cars to be easy to drive and do exactly what they want, the 1M doesn't quite do that which keeps you from taking it for granted or getting bored with it. Driving many modern BMWs is like having a beautiful stepford wife that you fulfills all your wishes and desires eagerly but the 1M is like marrying a some badass girl that will make you mad some days but when things are good, they are outstanding. Some people want the stepford wife, the big sterile McMansion and the Cadillac SUV. Some want things that are a little less perfect, more real, maybe a little raw. So you should drive a 1M and see for yourself. I still really like the E90 M3 and would love to have one because it's the last of the great BMW NA motors but If I could only have one, I have twice now gone with the 1M if I could only have one of them. Is it worth making the jump if you already have an M3, probably not, that is still a great car but if you didn't have the M3, I would go 1M or E46 M3. I know that's a lot of info, but it's not really a black and white thing. I hope it helps somewhat though! Best wishes and let us know what you decide! Last edited by nachob; 10-05-2019 at 03:44 PM.. |
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10-05-2019, 05:02 PM | #9 |
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10-05-2019, 05:05 PM | #10 | |
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10-05-2019, 05:06 PM | #11 | |
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10-05-2019, 07:45 PM | #12 | |
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He would be a great resource to chat with. I have spoken with him and is a very cool guy. Best wishes. |
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10-05-2019, 08:48 PM | #13 | |
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Some have had notchy second gears in the 1M too if that's what you mean but overall the 1M gearbox is much better shifting than the e90 M3. I got my first 1m with .3 miles in Munich. I babied it, changed the gearbox fluid in Munich at 1200 miles and it still took a bit more effort get into 2nd gear. My second 1M, I bought with 9K miles and the gearbox was super smooth. Not sure why. my first one was earlier production July, my second one was August????? that's all i can think of except that the second was was Canadian and maybe the Canadian gearboxes have better manners? : ) |
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10-05-2019, 10:14 PM | #14 | |
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I’ve owned a few WRXs, a beloved 01 Impreza RS, a ‘69 Datsun 510, and the 1st car I ever fell in love with was a ‘65 Corvair Corsa. I loved all those cars for different reasons, some style, some handling, some because I built them from the ground up, then I bought a 1M. I really love this car, every time I talk with Nacho i'm telling him how great it is. Handle great right out of the box, plenty of power for a street car (enough to scare me sometimes, 295 PS4s in the rear and it's more than happy to spin 'em in 3rd gear), sounds good, super comfortable seats (my first time driving it was 1800 miles from Canada back to Florida and I felt pretty decent for that kinda seat time), fit and finish are great too. Mine has all the things I wanted in a car; Manual trans, short ratio steering, LSD, RWD, black interior, no sunroof and manual seats (as a bonus, mine is Canadian so there are not TPMS sensors to replace, it works via wheel speed instead). The ONLY option mine has is heated seats - which was actually the only one I was interested in because my wife likes them in the winter. It's not an exotic, it's not super flashy or fancy and doesn't have bells and whistles, There's no giant wing, no Brembo brakes (yet), and the only computer control is the traction control - which, as Nacho pointed outl is always doing it's thing (and if it wasn't this shit would be sideways all the time) it's not a good car if you're looking for attention as most people - even car people - won't really know what it is being that its badging is pretty subtle. Most people ask me if it's an M3... 135i owners will know though and you will be able to impress the hell out of them if that's your thing I've driven and worked on enough GR STIs that it's not even a question as to which i'd choose. I realize that's not the question, but i'd sell 'em both, if I was you, and get a couple 1Ms P.S. if you decide to import one, it's much less complex than it appears. |
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10-05-2019, 10:48 PM | #15 | |
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Regarding selling both cars and getting couple 1Ms, I wish I could financially haha. I can keep M3 and 1M financially, but I kinda don't want to own 2 BMWs. GR STI is a great car for me man haha. |
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10-05-2019, 11:09 PM | #16 | |
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I have the disadvantage of never having had seat time in an M3, but to be honest, they've always seemed big to me and I prefer snug quarters when it comes to cars. I wouldn't call it cramped, but its definitely not spacious. Plus I really like the stripped down aspect of the base 1Ms.. no B.S., just a great car. |
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10-06-2019, 09:09 AM | #17 |
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No, but I want one Your point? 1M is a compromise. Why would you compromise on a weekender other than $?
OP, what is fun to you? Despite my opinion on where you should spend your money. I'm confident I will have less fun in a GT4 over the 1M. I'm also the fool that runs no MDM etc whenever I drive it. The diff locks up slow for a LSD, but when it does - it feels good and fun. This car has a basic FR layout in the form of a brute which keeps you on edge. It is not fast, don't mistake the two. Last edited by gmx; 10-06-2019 at 09:17 AM.. |
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10-06-2019, 09:58 AM | #18 |
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IMO the 1M is the best package out of all of them.
Practical, ridiculously fun, and very unique and characterful. Just imagine a 128 wired on massive amounts of barbiturates. I respect cars like the GT4 and E92 M3 but neither of them can be as practical or as enjoyable, respectively, as the 1M is.
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10-06-2019, 12:30 PM | #19 |
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Price was the main driver but not all for me. At some point Canadian and US 1Ms were listing for close to the same price in US and CA dollars. 61K USD for a US car with 9K miles for example and 61K CAD for the same car in Candada. Then in 2015, the Canadian dollar tanked as oil prices dropped. Cars were still listed at the same price but now 61K Canadian dollars was 45K USD instead of 55K. In my case, there was an additional thing. The 1M was intended by the people that designed it on weekends to be a back to basics, pure, non-gadgety club racer type M car. You can see Kay Segler discussing it in his roll-out video saying most will order this with no options. The base 1M came without NAV hump, wihtout idrive, without motorized folding mirrors, without parking sensors, with manual lighter seats with more head/helmet room. BMW USA in all their infinite wisdom like when they replaced the awesome M cloth interiors on the european M235i with vinyl to maintain a "premium" appearance, offered a deluxe package with the heavier options and fully loaded with idrive and NAV hump. Most of the cars in the US were ordered with NAV or the Premium package with power seats and motorized folding mirrors. Not only were the seats heavier, but they sat about 1 3/8" higher than the manual seats.
A few people, like myself did order strippers with no options...in my case only Sirius because I take long road trips but I had to pay extra for the privilege of getting it that way. I also had to argue, beg, plead to get it optioned that way. Most 1M owners in the beginning were people that got M cars every few years not necessarily the crowd that Kay Segler was targetting so for many reasons: Thinking that loaded would bring higher resale value, dealers ordering the cars loaded an not giving you a choice, people liking the gadgets etc few were ordered as strippers. Many of those that were ordered "properly" ( : ) in my humble opinion, sorry NAV guys just my opinion ) were diehard autocrossers or trackers so that left a very small pool of cars in the US that were manual seat, no-nav low-option cars that were not tracked, modified or autocrossed. In Canada, while they got less 1Ms than we did...about 220 a higher percentage were ordered without NAV and power seats. These are the lightest versions of the 1M and ironically, in the US all M2s came with power seats and they made a special edition more expensive M2 with lighter manual seats which you could get in the 1M. since you are new, many argue that the 38 or so lbs are not worth this but if you wanted the purest, lightest version of the 1M, these were them. The Canadian 1Ms had a couple other cool options. 1. As iDontRemember mentioned, they strippers came with bluetooth and heated seats standard which adds little weight but makes the wives happy. 2. They also used the older tire circumference based tire pressure monitoring system that does not have TPMS sensors in the wheels so you can swap wheels without worrying about TPMS sensors, TPMS sensor rebuilds or TPMS sensor batteries. 3. Another cool feature of the Canadian 1Ms is that they have the same German KM only speedo which is very cool since I saw this on the German 1Ms when I picked mine up in Munich. It is so simple and clean and takes me back to Deutschland. 4. Canadian 1Ms were actually built to the same US EPA and California Air Resources Board (CARB) standards so they can be imported as "Conforming" cars that don't require retrofitting as long as you do an informal personal import. A business or dealer would have to retrofit only the speedometer if it was a business transaction. So for me the combination that I was able to find more low option, low mileage, no track time 1Ms in Canada because many were stored for winter than in the US coupled with some savings over US models made it work out for me. Last edited by nachob; 10-06-2019 at 12:52 PM.. |
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10-06-2019, 02:47 PM | #20 | |
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10-06-2019, 03:06 PM | #21 | ||
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