BMW Celebrates 25 Years of the M3
My dad has this awesome photograph of him when he’s about five years old, wearing the kind of thing five-year-old boys wore in the mid-1950s—high-fastening pants, a short-sleeved shirt, and flat-top tennis shoes—but that’s not what makes the photograph so fantastic. It’s the fact that also in the photograph are his mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather. For those of you who weren’t math majors in college, that’s four generations in a single photograph, assembled in one place at one time over a half century ago. Now, the image stands as a relic not only of the era but of a family that has blossomed beautifully from that basic unit.
Yeah, like I said, it’s pretty awesome—but nowhere near as awesome as the family photograph BMW recently assembled for a special media event in Spain.
A local San Francisco BMW dealership tipped us off about a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of four generations of BMW M3s to mark the 25th anniversary of the model’s existence. All together, on the same track, raced the original E30, the E36 and E46 models that followed, and then today’s current E90 series. Also present was the brand new M3 GTS, the big, beautiful baby of the batch.
In Mountain View, luxury cars can often be found in all sorts of varieties in classified pages and on Craigslist and eBay, but no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t put together a lineup like this in the condition each of these vehicles are in. None had over 10,000 miles and everything about the engine and interior were pristine. The only thing keeping the older models from being 100% authentic to their eras was the fact that all had brand new tires. Other than that, we’re looking at darn near mint condition.
Media of course had a fit attending the event, but who can blame them? To watch all these sweet BMWs zipping around the Ascari Race Resort’s resident track is a special thing, especially with the oldest of the batch now 25 years old. Can you believe it’s been that long since we got our first view of the M3? Believe it. From now until forever, there’ll be photo evidence to prove it.
