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 This
is how the M3 looked when I first picked it up. It had most all of the
options available on the M3 except the in dash computer. I traded in
my Mercedes 300E for this car thinking it would be a good compromise between
the 300E and my Porsche 911 (which I sold to buy a house). The quality
of this car is no where near what the Mercedes is, although it was fast
(faster than my 911) the cheap leather interior, cheap plastic dash, door
panels and trim just rubbed me wrong. To top it off, most of the body
panels were not aligned correctly and the factory M3 body kit paint did not
match the rest of the car (mind you, this car was all original with no
damage or paint work.)
 First thing that I did was ad Bilstein
sport shocks and H&R springs along with a set of 18" Breyton wheels. I
never did like these wheels and sold them soon afterward. Wheel
choices at the time I bought this car were not plentiful so I had to get
creative.
 I had Dazz
motorsports modify a set of Mercedes 18x8 AMG monoblocks to fit the BMW.
Using a set of wheels that was originally designed for the SL, Dazz had a
machine shop shave off a bit to make the offset correct for the BMW.
Dazz also had the hub honed out so these would be hub centric and the bolt
pattern was changed. Only noticeable difference was that the lug holes
were a little oblong. After they were finished, off to the
chromer they went. The wheels turned out excellent with no vibration
or other problems. You will also see that I removed all of the black
body molding and had it painted body color. I also added a Hamman DTM
wing.
 In
this front view, you can see that I painted the BMW chrome grill trim body
color and added gray side markets and gray fender blinkers.
 For
the rear, you can see the Hamman wing, euro tail lights and the Supersprint
cat back exhaust.
Here is a close up shot of the AMG monoblock wheels. This
definitely turned out to be one of the most unique mods I have ever
done to a car.
Other mods included a complete Euro air box, K&N filter and Jim Conforti
ECU chip. This car was fairly fast and handled very well. I
bought a C36 to replace this car and when I was selling it, a 17 year old
high school student bought it (his dad that is). What a car for a 17
year old, I was so envious, I never had a car that nice in high school.
Imagine the possibilities!!!!!
Sound System
I never made it very far with the sound system, but I did add a Bandpass
 cabinet
and a small amp to the factory sound system. This cabinet was designed
to fit under the rear deck and the two four inch ports were of a flexible
type and were routed up into the passenger compartment through the speaker
holes in the rear deck.
I used two JL Audio 10w1 subs in this cabinet and plotted the design using
Rockford Fosgates TermPro software program.
 In these
pictures you can see the type of data that is returned from
TermPro. Software like this is an absolute must for correctly
designing an optimum enclosure for your vehicle
 Here
is the cabinet installed in the trunk. I used a flexible dryer type
tubing for the ports. The cabinet was designed taking into
consideration that the volume normally consumed by the ports being inside
the box was now allocated to the subs.
A close up shot of the port as it is routed up into the rear speaker opening
on the rear deck. The factory speaker grills were left in place.
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