The M3. Had a 2004 6MT and the way it went through the powerband was amazing. I wish BMW had followed the Porsche route with their N/A sixes on the upper end of the performance lineup. Keep making the car lighter, refine and develop an N/A Inline 6 for the decades to come and reserve it for the top performance cars. Now, the additional weight/bloat that the 3 Series took on over the years may not have been optimal for this application, but it’s fun to think about what could have been. The cars could have been truly special. Yeah, you might limit your target demographic a little bit but you’d have a very compelling product at the top. Special everything, like it used to be. Now they just follow the same formula for all the cars. I know turbos have their place in the everyday grocery getters and even in performance applications, but man, a 4.0 Inline 6 that can scream to 8k and beyond would have been a worthy successor to the M3s of old…
