First of all, Gustav is a genuine car nut. Hats off to you G! But correct me if I am wrong...this comparison is what R&T, C&D, and MotorTrend do when they want a slanted advertising sales tool. When I first joined this forum we were talking about mods, mods and more mods. Last year I played with my 996TT, put my money where my mouth was, and took my modded TT to Vegas for a shootout. And a win. Why don't we have Todd Z, Stephen C and the other trail blazers of Porsches face off against a "modded" M5 and let there be peace. Stock vs Stock is BS, and street light to street light is for Rice. My delivery of a Black/Black M5 next week is because it is one bad *** 4 door that I must have. Comparing it to the Porsche is lazy at best. They both rock! And G, the M5 board is nothing more than geeks talking about air freshner preferences. Can you as tha Admin. change that nonsense?
Stu

 

That was the biggest crock of crap I have ever seen. If anyone takes that video seriously they should be hung upside down. If somebody cares enough to take a video camera to a Swedish airport, he cares about what the camera is filming. What a joke! Gustav- what a joke! Enjoy your BMW.

 

Haha yes, ULTIMATE TEST!! But... Alex's car is so modified it would be unfair!

 

The current crop of tuned 996 turbo based cars will destroy any current m5 or m6.

In al honesty, it is going to take years before we see some seriously fast tuned e60 m5's or e63 m6's just like it took years before there were fast e39 m5's (oh... and there are.)

 

Way to substantiate nothing. What a joke!

 

Disagreed. How many stage 3+ 996tt's (turbo swap) are around?

Most have the typical Chip exhaust. Which i doubt is enough to beat the M6. Destroy, no chance...

 

I wasn't talking about how many tuned turbos there are out there, the point is that the highly tuned ones will win.

There are no highly tuned e60 m5's and there won't be for a few years.

You take a car like alex's turbo, and it will whoop on a stock m5, that is a given.

 

hmmmm... I still have yet to loose on the highway... and not too long ago, since we are talking m5s.... a couple of hot heads in a "chrome polished" most hideious wheels and spoilers played with me on the Kennedy HW going to downtown chicago.... it was no contest... and that was on stage 3 w/k24s.... back then. since then I upgraded.

NOT many m3s or m5s are out there other then chip and exhaust... not many cause all the guys I know in skokie Illinois that go to starbucks are scared and to put on superchargers... and money is no object to them.
thats what they all do... chip and exhaust.
From what i know, there is one blue 2001 m3 norht side chicago that has a supercharger- thats it.
I went to a M meet and about 30 m3s and m5s showed up... not even one had more then chip and exhaust.

 

I firmly believe that a GT2 or X50 Turbo with the right chip and exhaust will destroy an M6. With 3100lbs., superior aerodynamics, decent tires, and say 550hp (easily attainable with a chip and exhaust with K24s), there would be no contest if the driver shifted competently.

My ex blue Protomotive car would eat almost any tuned E39 M5, even the dual supercharged ones, that I am confident. Even the ones with 800hp or so have a hard time breaking into the 10's from what I have seen.

Alex's car will flat out destroy pretty much any tuned M3/M5/M6. How many streetable modern BMWs can run 9's? Mark my words, I know first hand, Protomotive is no joke.

In any case, I know which setup will be more reliable over the long run. BMW M street engines save for the MacF1's simply cannot take so much stress, as the high compression motors are already really maxed out. M96 motors with heavy duty rods are a much better bet for forced induction.

As for me, well, I guess I will settle with having a slow, well balanced GT2 that will shine at the track. I guess the new crop of cars only makes it more compelling to build an R-GT2.

 

Hamann7, I think you are missing out that 4WD eats power at 120 mph +, advantage of high revving 8300 rpm coped with a 7 speed gearbox.

The Ruf Turbo R will tell some of the story, Afer all, the Ruf Turbo R 550 HP is not any Honda HP, they are Ruf (more. than 550 HP...). And even then we are comparing a heavily tuned Porsche with a standard BMW.

BMW M6 is standard. I would be interested to see what a M6 would do to a GT2 in higer speeds... A standard GT2.

 

Your ex protomotive car would not beat some of the new supercharged e39's. It was a very fast car, no doubt, but some of these m5's are putting out upwards of 700 @ the wheels, good luck with that. From a stop the turbo would have the traction advantage, from a roll I would expect the m5's with far more hp and torque through the rev range to win, if they can hook up.

Basically, it would come down to who spent more money. Once cars are at the 700 rwhp range I don't think either one is reliably streetable, and your protomotive car was many hp shy of that wasn't it?

10's isn't a matter of power for some of the tuned M5 cars, it is a matter of traction.

Over in europe they have BMW's running 8's, just like they have certain 964 turbo's, etc, there are lot's of crazy tuned german cars over there that put up times no one in the US has approached.

I don't think it is fair because you had a bad experience with your m5 that you label all M motors as unreliable. M3's got a bad rep due to the bearing failures. For the record, I had an E46 M3 and I don't remember when I wasn't flooring it and taking it to redline. Basically, I would be at 8k whenever I could, never a single issue.

Also, if these motors are so fragile why are there supercharged e46 m3's running around on stock compression putting down upwards of 400 @ the wheels? Why do some of these motors have 40k miles on them and no issues? The magic is in the tuning...

The E60 M5 motor isn't exactly maxed either, BMW engineers have had it on test beds spinning to 10k and have tested it on the track with a 9k redline. It has a bit more left in it, they dialed it down for reliable street use and so it will last.

I guess time will tell on this one....

 

Sticky,

You are right, the E39's definitely have a problem with traction. My ex car put out about 558hp on an AWD dyno at only 1.2 bar, I suspect it probably put out well over 600hp to the rear wheels if you disconnect the AWD drivetrain, but I guess it really is all academic. Todd Knighton estimated the engine probably put out over 700hp, but we never put it on an engine dyno.

I guess there will always be some crazy *** car out there, but having owned an E39 M5, that is certainly not a car I'd want to tune to 700 whp. I'd be surprised if that motor lasts much over 50K miles with that kind of setup. I won't even get started on the handling with that kind of power since we are talking about autobahn storming only.

I think the key point here is that you can tune anything to be fast, but how about reliability? I am quite sure that a 700hp 996 Turbo will last an endurace race. In fact, it has proven that it can by Manthey and Alzen. The E39 M5 has many a weak link. Every single Bimmer that I have had has had problems with the cooling system or engine after 50K miles without exception. The dealers would always tell me that I am driving the car too hard, and I didn't even bother taking the M5 to track after the first and only time. In fact, I just got a PM on another board from someone whose S62 motor grenaded like mine, so obviously it's not an isolated incident. In addition, the drivetrain, clutch, and suspension parts are simply not meant to be beaten up at the track regularly, whereas I really believe Porsches are much better suited to the task. Perhaps the M3 CSL is a different story, but since they aren't brought here it is hard to tell.

Many of these "highly tuned" turbos run well over 1.4 bar of boost, the reason why we used the 1.2 bar boost spring was because the car had trouble hooking up initially even with Pilot Sport Cup tires. If you ran a little higher boost, it would probably be extremely fast from a roll on. To be fair, this particular 996 Turbo was also lightened by 200 lbs. or so as well.

These cars are actually quite streetable, it all depends how much boost you want to run all the time. For the street, I usually ran a 1.0 bar boost spring for better reliability, and it was fine. I've heard that Alex D.'s Protomotive car can be daily driven, it even has a very extensive stereo system and full interior!

@ Gustav-- Yes, you are right the AWD drivetrain does start to have a parasitic effect on power above 200km. However, according to my Open Road Racing friends who have gone through desert roads at well over 200mph, this same parasite also offers wonderful stability at those speeds. For my use, good thing my GT2 is RWD.

I get high speed stability by tilting the wing a little, but it too has quite a parasitic effect at higher speeds.

I am curious to see the comparo with the R Turbo 550. This is most likely the package that my GT2 will get, obviously it will be noticeably faster than the AWD version, I would think. I remember Guy's car before the Nardo was about as fast as the Yellowbird!

One thing is for sure, the M5/M6 are pretty fast, almost fast enough to compensate for its pure styling. OK, sign me up, I'll get one of them E60 M5's for daily beating.

 

Sticky, not to pontificate, but let's ask the question another way, if you were going to a track day in 100 degree F weather, would you rather drive a supercharged M3, or a GT2/3?

This discussion largely takes place in theory for me because I haven't heard of or seen any supercharged M3's run at the track hard for sustained periods. However, I think even the M3 nuts with blowers would have to admit that for reliability under such harsh conditions, a 996 TT, GT2, or GT3 would be the better car.

If you look at the Porsches that run ORR, it's amazing that these cars can run in scorching desert heat at over 200mph for 90 miles without incident. I have not seen any BMWs do this. A friend runs his unrestricted M5 in ORR in the lower speed classes, but when he gets serious (like 180+ average speeds), I bet he'd rather grab the keys to his Ruf Turbo R.

 

Gustav, Interesting test ... may be not too suprising. TT has AWD and may be aerodynamically worse than the M6. Does anyone know how the Cd compares between the two cars?

When my M5 arrives, it would be interesting to run a similar test between the M5 and the GT3 (any volutneers to drive the M5?) FYI we ran a similar test between the GT3 and CGT (600hp) from approx. 90MPH to 180MPH and the CGT was only a couple of cars ahead ... however this involved some twisties and not just a straight line. The difference there is Cd for GT3 is 0.29 while Cd for CGT is 0.39.

 

Gotcha.

As far as the above race goes...a slightly modded TT would tie or beat an M6 at all speeds, IMO. And a stock GT2 would be a driver's race from a roll (with the advantage to the GT2 from a stop).

The C6 Z06 is a different story. It would take a Stage 4 TT or higher to beat one decisively, IMO.