[joepimentel]

Originally Posted by mkoesel

I am not sure I understood what point you were try to make here, but I rarely find it productive to pedantically debate the precise meaning of slang language such as "Baby M" and "M-Lite". It was clear from context to me what the OP meant with his use of those terms, and I didn't see a need to press him further on it.

Thanks! My whole purpose of this thread wasn't to debate whether the M340 is a true M or not (I recognize that it's not and that it's not designed for the track) or to split hairs about terminology or branding, but simply to understand which M3 it would compare best against in a general performance sense. Thankfully you understood me.

Originally Posted by 530iDriver

I would say that a G20 330i will be as fast or faster than an E36 or E46 M3. People today are performance spoiled. 20 years ago a 6 second car has considered to be very fast and anything 5 secs and below was super car territory.

Originally Posted by 530iDriver

The E46 M3 did 0-60 in 4.5 secs. The E36 M3 before it did the same run in 5.2 secs.

20+ years later a "base" new 3-Series runs circles around an E36 M3 and accomplishes this with a 2 liter turbo. And it is not that far off from the E46 M3.

Today's M340i is as fast 0-60 as the V8 equipped E90 M3 was from just a decade ago. These were 0-60 cars in the 4.1 sec range.

I believe the horsepower wars of the last 25 years have done both good and bad. There was a time when a regular BMW automobile was not the fastest or most powerful but offered the most balance of the bunch. And yes the vast majority of non-M vintage Bimmers were slow cars by today's standards.

Thanks 530iDriver. These are exactly the types of tidbits of info I was trying to understand. With the improvements in technology I'm sure that the M340 performs better overall than some M3s of the past, and if that's the case then I was curious to which it measures up best to.