Used BMW M3 CS (E46, 2005 - 2006) review – BMW M's forgotten modern classic

My E46 BMW M3 CS memory is different to the dozens of amazing moments from various evo Car of the Year weeks down the years. All alone, in the height of the midday sun, driving to pick up some lunch in Castellane, nestled in a fold of rocks on the Route Napoléon. The CS had already finished second in our ‘real world’ preliminary round, just behind the extraordinary Clio Trophy, thus qualifying it to face the big boys: Ford GT, F430, Gallardo SE and others from Aston, Porsche and Mercedes. 

That lunchtime dash told me it wouldn’t be overwhelmed by either the competition or the location. In fact, its exquisite straight-six, serene responses and outrageously malleable balance matched the road, the weather and my mood to perfection. As it tumbled down into Castellane, feeling almost weightless, sweeping through turns in its great, almost elastic sweet-spot, the relatively humble BMW M3 jumped right to the top of my list. It took a Ford GT to displace it, and only after much soul-searching. The M3 CS felt like a superstar.

That would have been late October 2005. The sun didn’t stop shining, the pizza in Castellane’s town square was hot and drizzled with fresh chilli oil, the local gendarmes looked kindly upon us after a quick blast in the Ferrari, and the Gallardo shot the most beautiful blue flames at night. Nirvana. Snap back to Bedfordshire many years later on a cold January morning, I’ve just had a petrol station sausage roll for breakfast, the roads on the way here were crumbling after weeks of howling wind and apocalyptic rainfall and it’s dark. I’m not sure it’ll really get light at all today. That’s ok though, because waiting for me is a pristine M3 CS. Still nirvana over a decade on? Let’s see.

BMW M3 CS (E46) in detail

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Back in ’05, the CS pack – known as the Competition Package in the US and Europe – cost £2400 here in the UK, taking the price of the M3 to £43,555. The E90 3-series had already been launched at this point, so the mildly tweaked M3 was a last hurrah for the E46. On paper it did look like a pretty mild upgrade, too. 

The CS gained CSL-style 19in alloys (lighter than the optional 19s that so upset the fluidity of the standard M3 but half an inch narrower at the front than the pukka CSL wheel), the faster steering rack and M Track mode stability control setting from the CSL, plus revised spring rates and bigger brake discs. It came with the six-speed manual gearbox as standard, although most were fitted with the SMG ’box, a £2100 option to give you even more of the CSL experience. We loved the manual then, and the evolution of paddleshift systems has only underlined the appeal of the H-pattern, three-pedal car. An SMG felt pretty creaky when new, let alone a decade on.

We needn’t worry about that today because Soni Pone’s Carbon Black M3 CS, the last registered in the UK in October ’06, is a six-speed manual. It also looks like it’s been locked in a temperature-controlled, dehumidified time capsule since it was registered. It’s done 36,000 miles, but you’d hardly believe it. Soni treats it like his baby, whereas I think of the CS more like that old girlfriend you had before settling down. You know the one. Fortunately, he’s happy for me to enjoy it to the full, he says. An invitation I couldn’t possibly refuse… 

Aargh, the seats! I remember now. Adjustable in about a thousand different directions but still almost impossible to get truly comfortable in. After two or three minutes of playing with the electric adjusters, I settle for the best compromise: a little too high despite being on the lowest setting, steering wheel just a shade too far away, and the lumbar contorting my back in unnatural ways. The CS had an Alcantara-trimmed wheel and its buffed, bobbly surface is the only sign of wear in an interior of stark simplicity. Set in a simple oval cluster ahead are two large grey-faced dials – on the left a speedo marked to 180 and to its right a rev-counter with small yellow lights around its outside edge starting at ‘4’ that disappear one by one as the engine warms through. A permanent amber light comes at 7500rpm and two red lights, also unblinking, mark the zone from 8000 to 9000rpm. 

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The three-spoke wheel is famously chunky and squishy but my muscle memory adapts instantly. There’s just one button on the right horizontal spoke, a small oblong mysteriously marked 1/0. It activates M Track mode, that CSL-spec halfway-house stability control setting. Press it and the circular outline of the yellow DSC warning symbol illuminates beneath the small fuel gauge to the left of the speedo. Ahead of the gearlever on the centre console are DSC and Sport buttons, the latter creating sharper throttle response. Not that the iron-blocked 3.2-litre straight-six needs it, if I remember correctly. The ‘S54’ engine has an 11.5:1 compression ratio, individual throttle bodies for each cylinder and the most intimate throttle response.

The M3 CS looks small, almost dainty these days. It feels that way, too, despite placing me a fraction too high on that riddle of a driver’s seat. It doesn’t have that sense of tininess that you experience when jumping from a 991 to a narrow-bodied 997 or 996, but the CS immediately imparts a sense of airiness and agility. The engine seems to ingest pure oxygen, the revs building quickly with an insatiable hunger. It adds to a picture of easy, perfectly rendered accuracy and overflowing energy. 

Even the straight-six’s metallic, trebly resonance sounds light, free from inertia. Of course, with 338bhp at 7900rpm and 269lb ft at 5000rpm, the CS’s performance lags miles behind that of a new M4. Even so, it flows along at a good pace, even while I’m in the reacquaintance stage, rarely venturing beyond 4500rpm. The real rewards are waiting right up past 7, though…

It’s fascinating to be splashing across familiar roads in the CS. I remember that the M3’s steering effort increased with the CS package, but it’s heavier than I recall and has a smooth, slightly gloopy feel. It doesn’t wriggle with texture then, but you sense the ebb and flow of grip beneath the tyres as its weight subtly shifts through these sodden and often bumpy, ugly-looking corners. The gearshift was never perfect – slightly longer than you’d hope and with a notchy, fragile action. I’d expected it might feel loose and baggy even after this car’s pampered life. It doesn’t. In fact it’s got a nice physicality to it. I’d stop short of calling it ‘sweet’ but it doesn’t get in the way for a second.

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What feels absolutely as I remember it is the CS’s control and its transparent balance, so accessible and so simple to exploit. The E46 M3 was always a hugely enjoyable car but the suspension struggled to deal with short, sharp bumps. On a car with 18in wheels, this manifested as off-putting vertical movements, the ride turning lumpy along the trickiest roads and rather knocking your confidence. With the heavier 19in wheel/tyre combination it could at times feel out of control, the car’s strange pogoing motion tangling the chassis’ usual fluidity in knots. 

The CS pretty much solves that. Even on these weather-ravaged roads it feels supple, deft and yet with serene poise. In tennis commentary, they talk about ‘soft hands’ when Federer absorbs a 100mph forehand and floats back the most delicate of drop volleys. The CS has that amazing combination of powerful control and almost poetic subtlety. Just occasionally there’s a little vertical leap – a hint of its roots – but it’s not enough to stop you committing to every corner entry and loading up the M-diff at the earliest opportunity. 

In terms of balance, the M3 CS has a purity that today’s torque-rich M4 just can’t touch on real roads. There’s just a taste of understeer on turn-in with a slick surface but front grip never threatens to fall away suddenly. The push disappears as soon as you add throttle (I prefer not to use the rather jumpy Sport mode), the CS finding a neutral balance and holding its line. However, with that M-diff so keen to lock-up, a world of thrills awaits those brave enough to peek over the edge of grip. 

In fact ‘edge’ isn’t such an accurate word because once traction is breached you quickly realise that the CS offers an expansive plain on which to express yourself. It feels sensational just loading up the tyres until they’re spinning a fraction faster than road speed, requiring you do no more than wind off a fraction of lock to scribe the perfect line. If you prefer, you can go further – much further – and set the CS up to slide into, through and out of every corner. 

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The key here is that the CS seems to get so many of the basics right. It’s compact, it has incredible throttle response and a fantastic power-to-grip ratio, and the front and rear of the car are beautifully aligned. Add all that stuff up and the CS manages to feel fast enough to be genuinely exciting but not so edgy that sensing the wheels spin-up gives you palpitations. In many ways it’s the exact opposite of an early F82 M4 on a bumpy, glistening road – predictable, possessed of excellent traction and so intuitive that leaning on the electronics isn’t the only sensible (and safe) option. Driving it quickly offers a sense of freedom that you’d never find in the old M4 without a smooth and bone-dry racetrack and a pit garage full of new tyres for you to destroy. 

Of course, it’s not all good news. The brakes. My, the brakes. Initially they feel fantastic, the pedal firm and responsive and with a short travel. In fact they’re so quick to bite that it’s tricky to summon the accuracy to apply the correct brake pressure while blipping the throttle on downshifts. You tend to overslow the car with a lurch or get a limp flare of revs that does no good at all. Don’t beat yourself up too much, nor worry unduly about recalibrating your sensitivity to work with the CS, because by the time you do, the brakes will be groaning in protest, the pedal perceptibly lengthening if you fail to listen to the noisy, almost painful protestations. They are a glaring weak link. 

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Just how weak is thrown into ruthless focus by the engine. My, the engine. It feels special at low speed not because it punches you in the guts with its torque (it doesn’t), but because it sounds so crisp and spins so freely. It really is the heart of the car and it only gets better the more you exercise it. Of course, we’re growing more and more accustomed to engines that produce peak torque from 2000rpm and, judged against them, the S54 is hopelessly torque-light. 

Yet foregoing the ability to overtake a row of dawdling cars without shifting down from sixth is no great sacrifice if the pay-off is the opportunity to feel and hear an engine build and grow to such a show-stopping climax. Its appetite to rev and rev, to climb through all the phases of its searing delivery, is just so addictive. The sharp, splintered noise adds a deliciously satisfying edge, too. It’s one of the great road car engines, no question. 

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In this hellishly wet winter it’s something close to a miracle when the clouds part and the road starts to dry for my final drive of Soni’s CS. He’s alongside in the passenger seat and we’re both smiling. The noise, the way the car digs for grip but manages to glide into gentle oversteer, and its composure even when it’s working hard to absorb the road’s gnarliest sections, offers such pure, uncomplicated fun that it’s impossible not to fall for the CS. 

When I think of an M3 – an M Division car in general – it’s this lightness of touch and the facility to indulge and entertain that comes to mind. It’s the very essence of what makes them such special cars and why we’re critical when the magic is lost in a whirlwind of sledgehammer performance and binary dynamics. The M3 CS nails that balance with pinpoint accuracy. Hard-edged and exciting, yet tolerant and playful, it could only be the product of the M Division.   

Today, on these roads, in pretty miserable conditions, the CS hasn’t created another one of those indelible memories that I’ll be recounting ten years from now. But we’re not on the Route Napoléon; we don’t have the blessing of the local police; that sausage roll was not a freshly pulled and generously topped pizza. 

That the M3 CS still shines so brightly in the context of another decade’s worth of fantastic drivers’ cars, under the cover of drizzle and splashing through puddles, is a testament to its inherent rightness. An agile front-engine/rear-drive car honed by people who know and care, married to a naturally aspirated engine that revs to the heavens and drives through a manual gearbox and a locking differential, is a timeless recipe. The CS is still a superstar. Now and forever.

BMW M3 CS (E46) specs

This feature first appeared in evo 219 (March 2016)