Your E36 M3 Wagon Dreams Can Come True if You’re Willing to Pay
Though BMW never made a proper E36 M3 Wagon, this example currently up for auction is as close as one could get!
It’s true. There isn’t actually a BMW M3 Wagon (or “Touring” model as they’re officially known) from the E36 generation. If you’re a BMW enthusiast, you’re likely familiar with the fact that the U.S. didn’t even get wagon variants of the E36 in the first place. Truthfully, the ones sold overseas are a bit, well, lackluster. Fortunately, though, there are some folks that go out of their way to change that.
Take, for example, this 1997 BMW 316i Touring, which is currently available on Cars and Bids. Well spotted, BMW enthusiast! You identified that the “16” in 316i” indicates that this car came from the factory with a 1.6-liter inline four-cylinder. Fortunately, someone took that boat anchor four-pot out and swapped in an S52B32 and a five-speed manual transmission from an M3. All of a sudden, we’re really spending some time thinking about how much we really need both kidneys.
More M3 Than Just an Engine Swap
Wow, you really know your stuff, don’t you BMW enthusiast? Unfortunately, you are correct, that is the 240-horsepower watered-down M3 engine for U.S. market cars. The European-delivered E36 M3 models had far more power than the S52BB32 engine in this car. We’re not here to complain, though, so we won’t. The S52 has plenty of tuning potential if that power figure doesn’t do it for ya. It’s an M3-swapped wagon, folks, don’t bite the gift horse’s hand as it feeds you. Though an E46-sourced S54 would have been cool, too. Just saying.
Other than just the engine, this car sports a good bit more proper BMW M3 stuff. The S52 is bolted to a ZF320 five-speed and uses the 3.23 final-drive limited slip differential and rear axles from an M3, too. In addition, it has both front and rear M3 subframes, M3 brakes, a paint-matched M3 front bumper, and even M3 sway bars.
Finally, it has an M3 instrument cluster that reads over 212,000 miles (though the true milage is unknown) and sports an M3 shift knob. It truly is as close to an E36 M3 Wagon as one can get.
It’s Already in the U.S.
That’s right, friends. Rejoice, because the elusive E36 M3 Wagon is already stateside with a clean South Carolina title. It’s hard to say what kind of price tag this thing could fetch. However, with such a clean chassis and an equally clean and thorough swap, it’s safe to assume it’ll fetch a pretty penny. At the time of writing the auction has five days remaining and already has a high bid of $6,969. Nice.
We’ll certainly be keeping an eye on this thing to see what the final hammer price is. Though we might not be in the bid war, we’re just glad we got a chance to check this thing out.
Photos: Cars and Bids
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