01
Origins
The first one existed for a rulebook. Group A touring car racing required manufacturers to build and sell a run of road cars closely related to what they raced, so BMW Motorsport took the E30 3 Series and rebuilt it around the demands of a race engine and a racing aerodynamicist. The result reached showrooms in 1986 with box-flared arches over wider tracks, a raised boot line and a more steeply raked rear screen — bodywork that shared almost no outer panels with the car it was based on. The engine was a four-cylinder built by grafting a motorsport-derived twin-cam head onto BMW's long-serving iron block: high-revving, individually throttled, and deliberately small so the racing version could rev harder still. Because the rules demanded it, the road cars were built in genuine volume rather than as a token run, and successive Evolution versions — each homologating a new spoiler, a new intake or a little more capacity — were sold to the public purely so the works team could use the parts.
1995-1999 BMW M3 coupe 02 · OSX · Public domain
