Hello everyone! Cross shopping for a secondary weekend car to supplement my MK7.5 GTI daily. I am looking between a 996.2 C2 and an 03+ E46 M3, both manual and convertible (these are my requirements).

I have seen a few threads about 996 vs E46 before, but not many that are post early 2010's - we've now had enough time to assess these cars as they advance in mileage. I am hoping to not spend more than 30k to get the car purchased and sorted maintenance wise. Also would like to keep maintenance costs generally lower over time, hence this post. I am aware of IMS/RMS for the 996 and VANOS, rod bearing, subframe for the M3... other than it depending on the particular example, do we have any knowledge here of which might be cheaper to maintain on the whole, given an example of those cars that already has those items sorted?

Thanks everyone!