Hello everyone,
I know this isn't an M3 project, nor will it have an M3 (S65) engine in the car when I'm done, but I figured it would be great to share my journey through this project since I wasn't able to do so with my last BMW E91 M3 OEM widebody conversion.
First for some background, I was originally inspired back in 2012 by member
63NP to build the 1st US based E91 M3 widebody and commissioned a local shop, LTMW of S. El Monte, to do the work. This car had a full Porsche Grey Black paint job as well as full OEM M3 replacement parts including cutting the original rear quarter panel and grafting the OEM M3 quarter panels. The entire process took a lot longer than I had expected or wanted, plus some additional headaches I won't get into, but the final result was well worth the wait and it was a great learning experience working with the owner Long. I think the car was well received by car enthusiasts and random people on the streets alike. Shortly after working with the famous
FLOSSdesign to make a custom wide 3 piece set of BBS LMs, he was sold on the M3 conversion and built a similar E91 OEM M3 widebody painted in Laguna Seca Blue. The Liberty Walk E91 came shortly after that as well. From that point on, widebody E91's were now a thing in the US!
Here is the link to my Bimmerpost front page feature for reference:
http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=941493
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Unfortunately my car was not as publicly advertised as the other mentioned E91's, but it was great to know I was ahead of the pack so to speak even though my car was already sold by the time those cars hit social media.
Regardless, I was glad I decided to sell the car to another forum member who has now taken the final steps to complete the project aka engine swap! Congrats
freddych!
Meanwhile, I was feeling a bit empty and many times regretted the sale. So to fill the void, I decided to start a new project and make it a little more unique than my last. Even by the time I sold my conversion in early 2014, there were probably 5 known M3 conversions in the world, and of course more since then, so doing another OEM M3 conversion was very redundant in my eyes.
For me, I take a lot of inspiration from past and present designs, and I'm sure a lot of people would agree that we all mod our cars because we use the cars as a platform to express ourselves. I do also understand that like fashion, certain trends and fads tend to dictate the auto industry but are fleeting, so I wanted to draw inspiration from history and make sure that I try to create something that is a bit more timeless. With the new project, I hope to accomplish this while paying homage to Motorsport racing and create a car I can drive daily.
I would also like to thank Ivan of STRASSESPORT, located in Irwindale, CA, for taking on this project with me. I am very excited to see where this goes! I will update this thread as I get more progress, thanks!
To start, here are the 2 cars being used to build the final product:
DONOR CAR:
