SWEET DELETES

Three Decades Later the M3 Lightweight's Power Deficit Is Forgotten and Forgiven

- TIM STEVENS

The scent hits you first, an undeniably vintage odor of tired adhesives outgassing their last vapors through weathered vinyl. This M3 has none of the rich olfactory effect you get when entering a new BMW, no luxurious animal hides, just a sliver of shiny, slippery leather wrapping the wheel and another bit on the shift knob. You won’t find gratuitous Alcantara inserts or garish seat belts, just simple black upholstery for a simpler BMW from a simpler time, a 1995 M3 Lightweight rolled out of BMW’s secret warehouse just for us.

This M3 was something of a parts bin special in its day, but what a bin. Using the lightweight aluminum doors and adjustable front splitter plus the tiny wing mirrors from the European-spec M3 GT, this version earns its decidedly straightforward nomenclature by weighing 200 pounds less than the standard roadgoing E36. That might not sound like much today in an era when a new M3 weighs just shy of 4,000 pounds, but the 1995 E36 M3 weighed about 3,150 pounds. Losing 200 required some compromises.

Pop the trunk and you see a token piece of carpet thrown on the floor, but that’s it. The engine compartment is similarly spartan, stripped of lining and, more significant, the air conditioning compressor and all its plumbing. In the cabin, button blanks outnumber actual buttons. A flat panel sits where the radio should be, while the console is trimmed in carbon fiber, one of the few signs in here that this is something special. There’s another woven inset in the dash bearing a small plaque: BMW Motorsport International Limited Edition.