Quote:
Originally Posted by z335is
I've owned both a sport package equipped 370 and now a ZCP M3. While I loved my 370, to say its a better car (track or otherwise) than the M3 is laughable.
For starters the engine is extremely harsh and it's tendency to overheat is well known. The viscous LSD that the car comes with is also incredibly weak, its benefits are marginal at best and it really shows on the track. Lastly, I always found the transmission / shifter to be quite "notchy".
I have yet to have a laptime in my M3 that was longer than than my 370, but I digress. Now again, the 370 is by no means a bad car, but I'm just offering my two cents on the comparison.
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The Z's engine harshness has already been beaten to death. Yeah, it's a bit harsh sounding, but it doesnt affect the performance one bit. If you can ignore a bit of noise, then there aren't any faults with the Vq37. VQ engines regularly win awards for being the best v6 engines on the market. In fact I'd say they're better than the bmw inline 6 in the 128i/328i too. And it doesn't have a "tendency" to overheat. All engines overheat when beaten on. A $500 oil cooler is all it takes to keep the vq happy and cool. Do you really think the s65 in the m3 wouldn't overheat and shut down after a couple of laps if the m3 didn't have a factory oil cooler? And don't forget the vq takes regular plain jane vanilla 5w30 unlike the s65 with its oh so special tws oil that you can't find anywhere other than the dealership. And the vq on my old car had minimal oil consumption, even with lots of track driving, unlike my goddamn s65 that drinks almost as much oil as it does gasoline
If you think the z's gear shift is bad, i sure hope you have the dct. Because the shifter in the 6mt m3 is just garbage. probably the worst shifter on the market right now on any performance car. The gates are long, the shifter is very rubbery and vague, and feedback is nonexistent. And the m3 gearbox isn't what you call buttery smooth either.
The VLSD was junk. But you'd be surprised to know the m3 lsd uses a "shear pump" which also uses viscous fluids and suffers from the same slow reaction time and vulnerability to heat that a vlsd does. For a serious track car, the only real way to go is a mechanical clutch lsd.