If we were to ask you what is the finest M car that BMW has ever produced, there’s a good chance you’ll answer the E46 M3. If we were to then ask what is the most exciting engine BMW has ever built, many would answer the S85 5.0-liter naturally-aspirated V10 of the E60 M5. So, what do you get when you combine the two? Automotive perfection, that’s what.
The owner of one particular E46 M3 in Germany decided to make a V10-powered M3 a reality and AutoTopNL recently had the opportunity to put it through its paces. It seems remarkable and may prompt you to buy a ticket to Germany to try and sample it yourself.
Limited details about the car’s build process are known. The engine bay of the E46 M3 is quite spacious but we suspect jamming the S85 V10 in there was a bit of a challenge. A little bit of digging reveals that AutoTopNL first drove this car back in November 2021 where it confirmed that the V10 is now mated to the dual-clutch transmission of an E92 M3. While this isn’t the only V10 E46 M3 on earth, it is thought to be the only one in the world that pairs this V10 with the DCT.
Watch: Could A Manual-Swapped E46 CSL Be The Best M3 BMW Never Made?
As you can probably imagine, fitting a new engine into an E46 M3 and then mating that engine to a transmission it was never designed to work with, is not an easy process and requires a lot of work. However, the finished result is truly something to behold. Making things even crazier is the implementation of an aftermarket exhaust system that allows the engine to really sing.