The BMW M3
The BMW M3 is the high performance version of the company's 3 Series vehicles. The car has proven to be a massive success with brisk sales and almost universally positive reviews. The thing that makes this especially shocking is that the car was never really intended to be sold to the mass market. Originally the M3 was produced in order to give BMW a car they could enter into touring car races. The result was not only one of the greatest race cars of all time it also became a best seller for the company.
BMW have long relied on motorsport as a way to market their vehicles and the M3 is the result of this. The BMW 3 series has long been one of the company's biggest sellers however in order to race the car they had to offer a different version. The company wanted to race in the World Touring Car Championship during the eighties and this required an upgraded car. The rules of touring car racing generally require that there be a minimum number of production cars sold that have the same aerodynamic shape and engine displacement as the car they want to race. In order to build a competitive race car BMW had to produce a small number of M3s that were a significant improvement over the regular 3 series and offer them for sale.
Not only did this result in BMW producing one of the most successful cars in the history of touring car racing it also created a whole new line up for them. The M3 quickly became a hot commodity and the company couldn't help but notice that there was a demand for the car far beyond the limited numbers that they had to produce to meet the rules of touring car racing. In 1992 they put the M3 into full scale production and the car has been a best seller for them ever since. The cars success is in large part the result of the huge amount of praise that almost everybody who ever drives it heaps on the M3, you would be hard pressed to find a negative comment about the BMW M3. I myself rented a BMW M3 once, and I adored it!
Because the BMW M3 is the high performance version of the 3 series the car has gone through several changes over the years. Every time the company changes the design of the 3 series it means that the M3 changes as well. As a result despite being in production for less than twenty years the M3 is already onto its fourth generation. The BMW M3 is widely regarded as one of the best cars ever to be built. The reviews of the car are universally positive and many people have even criticized the reviewers for always being so overwhelmingly positive. The car is routinely compared to other cars in its class in the magazine and almost always comes out on top. The reviewers rarely ever have anything negative to say.