Gadgetory

some cars can get a speeding ticket standing still especially when they're red and wear an EM badge let's drive the 2011 bmw m3 coupe and check the tech and let's do that somewhere else this 2011 coupe in Melbourne red is the fourth generation of the m3 it's also available as a four-door sedan not too unlike one of Cinderella's sisters and as a convertible both of which just seem a little greedy on the part of BMW I'll tell you as soon as this little red rocket arrived we said to ourselves ah this is how an m3 should be configured Spartan no LCD screen no navigation no I Drive controller down here those things seem foreign on a car that BMW advertises as not all race cars should be restricted to the track or something like that - simple gauges in a 3-series and you see these are pretty familiar except as a set of lights above the tachometer those are your shift lights speaking of shifting we have the optional 7-speed dual-clutch automated manual the DCT we get that on the road I think you're going to be stunned by how somebody finally got it right and if you want to bump up the basic sound on this guy you can keep this proper head unit and go to premium sound which will give you 825 watts the brawny esteem W says they've ever put into a car through 16 speakers driven by nine channel amplification we do have an iPod USB aux combo back here that can be had another part of a package or ala carte with the basic head unit now check out these buttons alongside the shifter here power EDC traction control off and this unlabeled rocker power is the engine response standard or aggressive on or off real simple EDC's your damper control off means comfort one light means normal two lights means sport we have continuously variable dampers or shocks all around this car that's optional here's our traction control turn that off for some real outrageous behavior this rocker is Drive logic it tells the DCT how to shift you have five shift patterns you see them in bars on the dash and if you disengage traction control you can get to the sixth that's the total wild combo and all those settings can be memorized inside the M drive mode button right here so once I get everything down in the way I want it I can snapshot that as my M mode just hold that M button down for two seconds and it memorizes everything now I've got one button access to go from whatever mode I'm in to wild one other sort of related Drive thing but it's not performance oriented is this little guy right here that defeats auto start/stop this vehicle will do the green thing when you come to a stop and a lighter in traffic we'll shut down the engine until you start to move again and then kick it back up you can defeat that here the auto start-stop technology is well crude it needs four to five cranks to get the engine back up once you lift off the brake and on a car that already gets hit with a gas guzzler tax what's the point I'll check this out this is a unique thing on the m3 coupe carbon fiber roof panel saves you a few pounds over steel but mounted up this high a few pounds can have quite an impact on your center of gravity now this is a coupe thing not on the sedan obviously not on the convertible obviously but you can replace this with a sunroof and then you get a whole metal roof up here which kind of misses okay okay let's get to the engine that's really it while you're watching this video right it lives here under a special hood special in two ways first of all you can always spot an m3 because it's got this big proboscis sticking up right here that makes room for a big motor underneath physically big as well as numerically big oh by the way this hood very light it's aluminum which is also an m3 thing now here's the four litre v8 no turbos no amplification if you will it's a naturally aspirated wonder of an engine it's got their double vanos totally variable stepless timing stuff going on underneath here are eight individual throttles it's an actual work of art seriously power on this guy is 414 horsepower interesting drop down on the torque number two just 295 foot-pounds big differential there we'll see how that performs on the road I can tell you now it's 0 to 60 in about 4.7 seconds with mileage that's going to make you swallow hard 1420 is the estimate I bet you'll do 12 on average the way you want to drive this car on a side note for you kids have only known cars that are high-tech and beautifully engineered this is how you tell when you're driving a real car the sound it makes when you start it up cold clattering metallic kind of clanking big ol lumpy square cam kind of idle not till it gets to full operating temperature does this car sound like it's not coming unscrewed that's what a high-performance car is supposed to do this dual flush automated manual two spindles seven cogs across them has been a long time coming in this form for BMW the first one they did was an absolute disaster they shouldn't have charged anybody they should have paid you to drive a car with that gearbox but that was like three four years ago now this car is outstanding these shifts are so tight and so beautifully executed you can tell by the sound just listen to this car run through the gears my love for this gear box is in every mode in Drive or sequential any combination of the aggression settings it's always an outstanding precise quick shift which brings me to the suspension next this car has these three modes comfort normal and sport I want a choppy piece of road here it's California we have no money to fix anything so of course every road is crap and to be in sport or normal with these low profile like they're 45 series tires forget it I'm here born I'm flying I'm not driving so I've got this guy in normal it's a very compliant ride but extremely capable even on a road where you're pushing it and the last thing I want to point out is how all this works together to be a really good livable powertrain this thing when you're in the drive mode will creep like an automatic give it a little bit of a blip and they'll start to creep along at walking speed like a true automatic transmission which does wonders for stop-and-go drivability or if you leave it in the softest gentlest settings and the d mode it drives like an automatic there's really almost no hint that there's a bunch of clutches in there doing their thing with a manual gearbox ok pricing on a 2011 m3 coupe bases 58 9 now all I'm gonna put on this car to be a purist is the dual clutch transmission $2,100 someone finally got it right and I might spend $1,000 on that dynamic suspension now of course you can add Sirius Satellite Radio BMW Bluetooth with BMW Assist Park distance sensors a 1900 bucks for the premium sound I'd probably skip all those you know what else I might skip this car and instead pick up a 335 is look at the numbers you see as much as I like the m3 if it's my money we're playing with here I'd skip it and it's gas guzzler tax of 1300 bucks and look hard at a 335 is here's how they stack up on MSRP the m3 is 15% pricier that buys you a 23% bump in horsepower but quite a bit less torque it's a little park here at 133 pounds heavier even with that carbon hat and after all that is only 0.4 seconds or 8% quicker to 60 get the is and your fuel economy goes from dismal to pretty good but you'll have to say goodbye to that sweet dynamic suspension and dual clutch transmission look if you really get on the track and don't just talk about doing it the m3 is your car just make sure you for it streets