It’s no secret that Bugatti Rimac CEO Mate Rimac is a fan of vintage German automobiles. We’ve touched on his collection before, and let’s face it, when you run one of the most high-tech performance outfits on the planet and still choose to daily drive 20-plus-year-old sport sedans, it says quite a lot about you as an enthusiast—and to be clear, we like what we’re hearing. Evidently, we’re not alone, because Rimac’s internal combustion fleet keeps earning him atta-boys from all over the Internet. This time, it’s coming straight from the mothership.
It’s Rimac’s E30 M3 Sport Evolution that is getting attention this time around. His impeccably clean, one-of-600 Evo III’s would turn heads just about anywhere, so it’s no surprise that it caught the eye of the folks in Munich.
This conspicuously rare E30 was spawned from BMW M’s Touring Car racing program, which was restricted to production models. At the time, that was defined as anything with a series run of 5,000 units or more. The M3 itself satisfied that requirement. When BMW wanted to turn up the wick on its race cars even more, it turned to an exemption that allowed them to use even hotter components than the standard M3’s so long as a minimum of 500 units were produced.
This is how the Evolution was born, and we’d eventually get three iterations of it. The third arrived just as BMW was winding down its motorsports efforts with the chassis, making it as much a send-off for the model that served as the foundation for the performance world’s best-recognized four-door nameplate.
Behold, then, the 1990 BMW M3 Sport Evolution III—the screaming little sport car’s final form. The punched-out four-cylinder engine displaced 2.5 liters (instead of the standard 2.3) and produced 238 horsepower to the standard M3’s 192. That may not seem like much compared to today’s 500-horsepower sport sedans, but you weren’t seeing numbers like that out of a four-cylinder in 1990.
Rimac’s example is a beaut. If there’s a piece of trim out of place or an incorrect replacement part, we can’t spot it. Hey, anything impeccable enough to get the attention of your competition must be pretty special, right?
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