Regarded as one of the best driver’s cars ever, the E46-gen BMW M3 CSL did, however, have one major flaw: its automated manual gearbox.
The SMG was not the most smooth- or fast-shifting transmission out there, and did not do justice to the sports coupe. Luckily, one can fit their M3 CSL with a stick shift by choosing one of the different conversion kits available for it, such as the one provided by Everything M3s.
The British company will remove the gearbox from the vehicle, replacing the electrohydraulic element with a traditional clutch pedal and stick shift arrangements. Then they will add a self-centering shifting mechanism, new clutch and flywheel. The engine management is then recoded for a manual transmission and the car is good to go.
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Converted using 180 genuine BMW parts, the kit can already be ordered in the United Kingdom. It starts at £3,500 ($4,537), and while there is a waiting list, “lead times are reasonable”, the company says.
“While we appreciate every iteration of M3, I was annoyed that the CSL – in my opinion the best of the best – never had a manual gearbox, so I decided to engineer my own”, said Everything M3s founder and ex-Formula 1 mechanic and engineer Darragh Doyle. “It is easier to live with in traffic and around town, while giving total control on a racetrack. A manual M3 CSL is the car that BMW should have always built.”
If you are worried that the manual conversion kit will affect the value of the car, don’t be, because the work is fully reversible, and all parts can be retained and refitted, thus returning it to the original state whenever desired.