BMW COULDN’T HAVE PICKED A TOUGHER TIME to launch its most hardcore E92 M3, the GTS. Arriving mere months after the Gen 2 997 GT3 RS and a year before the revered RS 4.0, you could say it drove straight into the perfect storm. Worse, building so few of them ensured the vast majority disappeared into collections, rarely to be seen or indeed sold.
When it was revealed, BMW suggested a total of 150 GTSs would be made, but in fact just 138 were built by the M division; a criminally small number for such a special car. Looking back it seems like an anomaly in BMW’s model line up, but cast your mind back to 2010 and you’ll recall the E92 M3 was a real force in GT2 and DTM. In the absence of having to build a true homologation special to go racing, the GTS was a pure celebration of the M3’s motorsport success.
It’s fair to say the ultra-short production run made it seem something of a collector’s trinket when we should have embraced it as a fresh alternative to the default GT3. Instead, BMW drew criticism for asking too much money – specifically when compared to Porsche’s 997 GT3 and RS models – but in truth £118k was small beer for such exclusivity. Especially when the transformation to GTS included a special long stroke 4.4-litre V8, which was subsequently
