[diab0lic]

My last car was an E92 M3 MT (with Tech, Premium, Competition packages and a modded exhaust). It was the most fun vehicle I've ever driven. It had plenty of power, and introduced me to the side of cars other than straight line power. It also had plenty of luxury inside, the car was credibly comfortable. All in all I think it compared very favorably to my friends R8 with nearly as much performance and plenty more luxury.

It was however incredibly expensive to maintain, especially those competition package brakes!

A friend of mine has the Model 3, but not the performance version. He hasn't had it long but the torque is very comparable and I'll bet the maintenance is quite a bit lower.

That said I'll miss that RWD behavior and those exhaust notes.

[davidjnelson]

That car is bananas, so fun to drive. I had the 2013 e92 m3 competition but very similar. Incredible luxury, 3.9 second 0-60 that literally slammed your head back into the seat producing a stupidly happy grin.

The best part of that car was the handling/suspension and the stereo though. You could put it in M Dynamic Mode, which let you do controlled drifts. Shredded tires, but goodness it was fun to drift corners everywhere.

The sound system was the best I've ever heard, far better than a custom $4,000 system. 800 watts, a 10 inch sub under both front seats. That car was the closest thing to perfection I've personally ever driven. Its only real flaw was it didn't have quite enough low end torque ( 300 lb ft ) because it was a naturally aspirated v8. Plus you had to really baby the throttle on the low end so the tires wouldn't start sliding around when you accelerated from a stop.

I had literally 0 problems with it in three years outside of the stupid Takata airbag recall, which is why I didn't keep it. But you can't blame that on bmw. Plus I mean I spent a lot on tires, but that's on me :-)

At the time I test drove a comparable tesla and thought it accelerated really slow and had poor handling. Also it didn't even have a backup camera, decent stereo, or integration with popular music streaming services. But I hear they have gotten better.

For me the big benefit of the tesla is that you can shave 15-20 minutes off your commute by using the carpool lane and still have a decent car. Plus you are doing something to offset climate change.

[diab0lic]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who is still ridiculously in love with their M3 experience. Haha.

Yeah I spent a fair bit on tires too, also on me.

[jklm]

What else was expensive to maintain, and why? Was this on a new M3?

[diab0lic]

It was an E92, and specifically the 2008 model. The most expensive thing I ever did was the brakes. The competition package has floating discs and they were ~$2500 to replace. There are just a lot of design decisions on a car like that which favour performance over maintainability. Another example from when I first got it was the car was the gas tank would only fill up to about 3/4. Turns out because the car is so low the tank has a saddlebag design and a transfer pump transfers gas between the two sides of the tank. Though the truth is even oil is a lot more expensive as it drank six quarts of 10W60.

A newer car would have likely been a little easier on maintenance, but the truth is the thing begs to be driven hard, which also doesn't help. Haha

[diab0lic]

Sorry I realized I didn't directly answer your question. It was used, ~64000 miles and ~7 years old when I got it.