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      11-30-2007, 06:38 PM   #84
UltimateBMW
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Man, now I have to eat my hat. I knew I should have bought that straw brimmed hat the other weekend. It would of passed through so much easier.

Just to save face, I've found this article as cached by Google on Oct 31, 2007.

Quote:
Handling
The M3 responds beautifully when hustled on a mountain road. Here, the car shows a level of balance and grip that belies its mass. The suspension feels tauter and more precise than the previous M3’s, allowing less body roll than its predecessor, yet there’s also a newfound willingness to absorb bumps without deflecting from the charted course. Combined, these attributes give the driver the confidence to plunge harder through corners. This BMW is a truly rewarding and fun car to drive fast.
Part of the M3’s handling prowess is the result of new spring and anti-roll bar rates, but much of it is attributable to the Delphi-sourced magnetic damper technology. Yes, these are the same type of shocks available on the Chevrolet Corvette, but don’t forget, they are also standard issue on Ferrari’s 599 GTB Fiorano.
With the exhaust note inciting more misbehavior than the little devil on Sylvester the cartoon cat’s shoulder, it is easy to press the M3 ever harder. The enthusiastic driver won’t regret succumbing to this temptation, especially on track; the car felt impressively capable around Spain’s Ascari club circuit.
Pressed hard, we discovered the M3 is set up with a bias toward understeer—the front and rear Michelin Pilot Sports have different compounds that promote this, for example—an understandable setting considering the vagaries of real-life driving. This produced some frustration on the tight, twisting road course, but with the M3’s newfound V8 muscle, relief is just a touch of the gas pedal away. And at least BMW, like a handful of other performance-car purveyors, has learned to tune its stability-control system so that, even when fully engaged, it intrudes minimally. That means it indulges a good bit of power or lift-throttle oversteer.
The M3’s front brakes are larger than before, with 14.2-inch rotors instead of 12.9, though they’re still clamped by single-piston calipers. While BMW was willing to let us use street tires on the track, the idea of using street brake pads on such a fast car—BMW claims a 4.8-second 0-60 mph—struck company officials as unwise. So the test cars were fitted with track pads, which will be available from dealers. With them in place, we detected no hints of fade.

Verdict
Instead of causing us to furrow our brows with worry about smacking a guardrail, the new M3 put a smile on our faces. There is a reason that jaded journalists were lined up for hours to get additional laps around the Ascari circuit. Forget any explanations of “needing” to see how the car handles, that only takes a couple of orbits. They wanted to because the M3 made them feel so comfortable exploring its performance limits.
On both track and road, however, there is one caveat: The M3 needs to be in its M mode to really shine. We can understand BMW’s desire to offer a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hide-From-the-Competition best-of-both-worlds solution with the adjustable settings, but one would think that M buyers are a self-selecting group who have already declared in favor of a balance skewed to the performance side of the equation. Same goes for the new M3’s weight- and cost-adding gadgets. Less is more in our book, so we can only hope that the inevitable stripped-down, lightweight CSL version comes to the States this time around.
Final U.S. pricing won’t be set until shortly before the M3 arrival in the U.S. next spring, but an expected base price in the low-$60,000 range will make it a relative bargain among fast prestige sport coupes, such as the Porsche 911 Carrera or Aston Martin V8 Vantage. With its powerful and soulful new V8, agile handling and pumped-up styling, the new M3 proves that sometimes reinventions can work.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache...ient=firefox-a

While the above article is no longer on the actual website, thats pretty much what it said. Their current article posted is this:
http://sci-mag.com/art1/art1p3.html

Last edited by UltimateBMW; 11-30-2007 at 07:01 PM..
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