The quickest and easiest way would be to start by removing the rear seats, plus a lot of softer bits like carpets and soundproofing, although I suppose there’s a point where it would start to become tiring on long journeys. I’ve found carbonfibre bonnet and bootlids for £1600 a pop, some motorsport alloys would reduce the unsprung mass, then I guess some light front seats could come in, although before you know it if you’ve gone to so much trouble that you’ve effectively got a track car. So chuck in a roll-cage and apply some racing numbers.
The good thing about a car like the 330Ci is that it’s one of those cars that could do everything.
Mileage: 92, 946
Update 9: Insurance woes
A reader writes with a warning about fitting a limited-slip differential, as we have to our E46 coupé. I thought £650 plus fitting was quite good value, but that might not be the end of the costs. Our reader’s insurer wanted to treble his premium after he fitted one. By calling around he reduced that to a 60% increase, but still. Gulp.
Mileage: 92,980
Update 10: Better and better
There were a few creaks when manoeuvring at very low speeds after the 330Ci received new suspension bushes and braces front and rear, but the noises seem to have gone away largely now. Not sure where they came from, but maybe things like that take a few miles to bed in and settle – or I’ve just got used to them or I’m driving around them. But I don’t think so. Anyway, glad to not hear it.
Mileage: 93,011
Final report: A sad farewell
For the past few months, I’ve been driving this 330Ci, an old- school BMW of the type that once so epitomised the brand. It’s a rear- wheel-drive, five-seat coupé with a naturally aspirated straight six and a manual gearbox – a kind of car that nobody makes any more.
Wearing nearly 90,000 miles on arrival but corrosion-free and in good condition, it’s a car that would retail for around £9000 – which is what its owner, eBay, paid for it.
Then they set about giving its technology a refresh, by adding an Apple CarPlay-compatible head unit, blindspot monitors and some other useful additions. But it also came to us with a budget to make some more modifications to it. I will come to those. First, though, to the experience of a mechanically standard 330Ci. It’s a car that was showing the age of the E46 generation of 3 Series relative to its rivals by 2005 (it had been on sale since 1997), but that doesn’t matter a jot today. It feels great, compact by modern standards, at less than 1.8m wide across the body, with keen RWD handling and a loping ride that is more comfortable than I remember it being at the time. It’s a really great cruiser.