Group A BMW M3 E30 - General info and history

[William Dale Jr]

Auto Action only lists the top 12 along with the odd retirement, so I don't have any record of a 635 at either Wellington or at Pukekohe. I can only tell you that it didn't finish in the top 12 at either race

Perhaps someone that has access to some NZ motorsport mags from that era will have the answer? I've been looking for results for those Nissan-Mobil races for some time now, and none of the Aussie magazines really gave full results.

[David Towe]

Perhaps a PM to Gerry Hodges might reap some reward

[David Towe]

Originally Posted by Driver TBA

I know its off topic. but did this B'n'H BM survive?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cwe7tFM3gc

I'm told it didn't survive. Incidentally car #56 (John Sax) was the sister car to mine (ex JPS Team) and it didn't survive either, although there are rumours it has been reborn, but my info may be wrong.

[ian beckett]

Hello David,surely the John Sax car seen in the clip from the Wellington race is a Group N car? I actually thought it was owned by co-driver Graham Coomes who raced Group N M3's in the British production series.I know Sax had two Group A cars but this does not look like one of them unless it had been 'detuned' for this event? Ian.

[David Towe]

Originally Posted by ian beckett

Hello David,surely the John Sax car seen in the clip from the Wellington race is a Group N car? I actually thought it was owned by co-driver Graham Coomes who raced Group N M3's in the British production series.I know Sax had two Group A cars but this does not look like one of them unless it had been 'detuned' for this event? Ian.

I've sent an email to John Sax to get it from the horses mouth, more news when it comes to hand. The reason I said it was the sister car to mine was that I was always told that one was written off in NZ in the 90s and didn't realise they ran Group N in the Wellington street race. My shortage of knowledge may have been improved again, we'll see.

[blinkybm]

Hello all.
Does any one have a list of the chassis numbers of the Group A M3 racecars built by BMW Motorsport?
Is there a "register" of these cars?
Thanks for your info...

[Bullett]

not to jump over your thread but anyone know of any up for sale? if you do please pm me

[brown dog]

Ian is right, the John Sax car in "that" incident was a Group N, I still remember that crash quite well. Poor John got s%#t from longhurst about it, but anyone who saw the incident usually agrees that Longhurst was being very hopeful in trying to pull of that passing move! I was told that John Sax has only just sold the car within the last 12 months, it had been repaired, but it had quite a few hits in its life.I also heard a rumour that the wrecked Longhurst car was taken back to Australia and stripped, and somebody acquired the shell, straightened it out and built it into a car again! Cannot confirm if this is true, or just an urban myth..............

[David Towe]

Thanks brown dog, I'm enlightened again.

[brown dog]

Funny that, I just rang a friend of mine today asking the same question, then saw this thread. Said friend knows a bit about these things, and said he will email one of his contacts at BMW Motorsport to ask him, although he added that he was pretty sure they did not keep good records of these. BMW Motorsport did not "build" any cars as such, they sold "kits" that the owner or team would nail together, or at least that is my understanding of it. Most information suggests they sold over 300 of these kits, which is a lot by any race car standards. The "works" cars could have been a built by a number of teams, Schnitzer, Zakspeed, Linder and Bigazzi being the most well know, and Tony Longhurst being well supported down under.As far as I know, no-one has formed a register for original motorsport M3's (built from BMW kits)- could be something to look into perhaps. I will let you know the response.
Bullett- I think that is called thread hijacking! Anyway, there were a few on racecarsdirect.com lately, looked like good spec. too. Also one in Australia a few months ago, still for sale I think, but is a "works" shell that has been built back into a car. Look at the pics, you will understand. Not cheap cars to buy anymore.
http://www.racecarsonly.co.uk/classifieds/Tetails/I:3aec345a-1560-5a05-120f-2ea1cfc1cf35/index.htm

[Notso Swift]

You would be better to move this discussion to the motorsport history arena, there has been a lot of work done on this already, maybe a search is in order?

[CurtEgerer]

I don't have a specific answer, but I'm sure the information lies within these links:

http://www.s14.net/links/links.html

[brown dog]

Hi NS, I did a search on this previously, a lot on the 635 Group A, but nothing on the M3, which really does surprise me! I will wait to see what records BMW can give us, and post them up, if nothing then I will start a thread on the chassis history archive, and get a list going.It seems ironic that the most successful car in touring car history seems to be the least documented- or am I just not looking in the right place?!!!

[Adrian B]

Does anyone know the history of Longhurst's 1991 Wellington car( the one crashed in the youtube clip), before 1991? Also would anyone have any good pics of the winning car from the 1988 Wellington 500 race ( Schnitzer M3/ Ravalia) car no.52?

[KA]

Originally Posted by brown dog

Hi NS, I did a search on this previously, a lot on the 635 Group A, but nothing on the M3, which really does surprise me! I will wait to see what records BMW can give us, and post them up, if nothing then I will start a thread on the chassis history archive, and get a list going.It seems ironic that the most successful car in touring car history seems to be the least documented- or am I just not looking in the right place?!!!

I don't think we've tried to tackle the M3s yet in the motorsport history of chassis archive forums- the Rover and 635 threads have turned out to be very long and complicated for around 20 and 80 cars respectively- if there were 300+ Motorsport kits for the M3 built, then that's quite a challenge....

I think it's worth starting a thread though, and seeing what comes up

[brown dog]

Pretty sure the B&H 1991 car that was wrecked was the winner of the Wellington race in 1990, when it was a Schnitzer car.This comes from a comment made by a commentator during that 1991 race (just after the car was wrecked I think) Not sure about the 1988 winner, but the 1989 winner is back here in NZ, being raced in classic events in the Sth. Island .

[Adrian B]

Thanks Brown Dog. I have the 1988 car, so thats why I am after pics of it at Wellington.

[chunterer]

blinkybm, this would be another fascinating chassis/history thread to cover at some point.

I suspect that we will investigate the M3 in more detail here on ten-tenths once we've completed the 635, Rover (and Capri which is dragging it's heels!) versions which are proving massive tasks in themsevles but enjoyable all the same!!

It's amazing how bits of info keep popping up to piece jigsaws together.

However i'm sure members can point you in the right direction to start off with.

chunterer

[brown dog]

Aha, I was wondering why you asked! I have a lot of old video footage of the Wellington street races which I am going to copy to DVD in the next few weeks,maybe 1988 is in there somewhere- any use to you? I am going to get a thread going in the chassis history archives, and try to piece together as many chassis numbers as possible- should be interesting! Are you in Australia?

[brown dog]

new thread going for chassis numbers:
http://tentenths.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98823

[KA]

Originally Posted by chunterer

blinkybm, this would be another fascinating chassis/history thread to cover at some point.

I suspect that we will investigate the M3 in more detail here on ten-tenths once we've completed the 635, Rover (and Capri which is dragging it's heels!) versions which are proving massive tasks in themsevles but enjoyable all the same!!

It's amazing how bits of info keep popping up to piece jigsaws together.

However i'm sure members can point you in the right direction to start off with.

chunterer

With the sheer number of M3s built, this is probably going to be even bigger than the 635 thread. Maybe a good way of kicking it off would be to try and identify which teams ran M3s in which championships. To start the ball rolling, I'll have a look at the 87 WTCC/ETCC and try and work out how many M3 entries there were....

[racer69]

Originally Posted by Adrian B

Does anyone know the history of Longhurst's 1991 Wellington car( the one crashed in the youtube clip), before 1991? Also would anyone have any good pics of the winning car from the 1988 Wellington 500 race ( Schnitzer M3/ Ravalia) car no.52?

This is a pic from the cover of Auto Action the week following the event. The win of Roberto Ravaglia/Emmanuele Pirro started a run of 4 straight Wellington 500 wins for Pirro.



I'd be interested to know the European history of this car before the 1988 Wellington 500. Did the car go back after?

[KA]

OK, had a look through the results on Frank de Jong's website, and this is a rough overview of M3 activity in the 1987 WTCC...

• Schnitzer- 2 cars full season, plus an occasional third for either the 'Ladies team' of Annette Meeuvissen/Mercedes Stermitz, or Grice/Moreno/Siller at Spa. Schnitzer also appeared from time to time in the ETCC
• Linder- 2 cars for a part-season- their main focus was the ETCC
• CiBiEmme- 2 cars for a full season, they also did 'double duty' in the ETCC
• Bigazzi- one car for the full season
• Alpina- one car appeared on occasions- 3 races I think, their main programme was the DTM

These were all factory-backed entries, and apart from Alpina's car were all registered for WTCC points (I think- I've got a suspicion the second-string CiBiEmme car wasn't...)

There were a number of privateer cars which appeared in a race or two- none ran a full season

• Garage Mirabeau (F)- 1 car at Spa
• Kuelker SC Team (HY). Josef Cserkuti's car, famously the only M3 not DQ'd at Monza, did the first two races, then returned at Brno. According to a contemporary Hungarian magazine interview on Frank's site, Cserkuti then concentrated on the European Hillclimb Championship
• MK Motorsport (D)- 1 car at Spa
• AMK Motorsport (CZ)- a single car at about 3 races
• Racing Services International- 2 cars at Nurburgring ,Spa and Brno
• Schwaben Motorsport (D) Thomas von Lowis of Menar- I think he mainly ran the DTM, but did the 'Ring and TT, then made the trip down under for Calder & Wellington
• Garage du Bac (F)- 1 car at Dijon and Spa
• JMS Racing (F)- 1 car Dijon & Spa
• Vogelsang Racing/Valier Motorsport (D)- 1 car at the 'Ring. This was another DTM entry
• Prodrive (GB). Frank Sytner's BTCC car appeared at the TT
• Heribert Werginz (A)- single car at the 'Ring, Brno and TT
• Milos Bychl (CZ) 1 car at the 'Ring
• Jens Winther/Castrol Denmark (DK) Longtime Danish sportscar privateer Winther ran an M3 at the TT
• Autobeaurex? (J) one car at Fuji for Will Hoy/Haruto Yanagida

The Australian/NZ cars, seen at Bathurst, Wellington & Calder

• JPS Team BMW (AUS)- 2 new cars at Bathurst and Calder. One of the original cars also went to Bathurst as a spare. Tony Longhurst also shared an M3 with Altfrid Heger at Wellington. Was this a JPS car, one of the German cars, or a local NZ entry?
• Archibald Motorsport/Cardinal Network (NZ)- 1 ex-JPS car at Bathurst & Wellington
• John Sax (NZ)- 1 car at Wellington

There may well be others, and some teams certainly used a number of different chassis across the season, particularly at the Australian races- according to the 1987 Bathurst annual, the BMW Motorsport entries were:

• Schnitzer- 2 regular WTCC cars
• BMW Motorsport- 2 cars (Meeuvissen/Stermitz and Juan Manuel Fangio III/Gary Brabham) run by Schnitzer, using cars borrowed from Linder and Zakspeed- (The Fangio/Brabham car had a CiBiEmme decal on the bootlid though....)
• CiBiEmme- 1 car. This is described as a spare chassis, only raced at the 'Ring, which had been sold to Mark Petch just before Bathurst
• Bigazzi- 1 car, described as a new chassis, replacing the one rolled by Grouillard in qualifying for the TT (if you've ever seen pics of the Bigazzi car at the TT, it was repaired using body panels presumably supplied by Prodrive, leaving it in a mixture of regular Bigazzi colours and the Rothmans colours carried on Prodrive's rally M3s... http://www.racingsportscars.com/etcc...-09-06-043.jpg )

I'll do the ETCC next....

[KA]

1987 ETCC

• Linder- 2 cars, full season
• CiBiEmme- 2 cars, full season, as well as running the full WTCC
• Schnitzer- 2 cars, Donington, Zeltweg and Nogaro- concentrated on the WTCC
• AMK Motorsport (CZ) 1 car- the only privateer to run close to a full season- a DNS at Donington after scrutineering issues, missed Estoril, but then ran the remaining 5 races.
• Autohaus Wollstadt (D) 1 car at Donington and Anderstorp at least
• Kuelker SC Team (HY) 1 car at Donington and Zeltweg
• 'Pequepe' (P)- 1 car at Estoril
• Vogelsang (D) 1 car at Zeltweg. Presumably Harald Grohs' DTM car
• Schwaben Motorsport (D) Thomas von Loewis' DTM car appeared at Zeltweg
• Heribert Werginz (A) 1 car appeared at Zeltweg and then did the last 3 rounds.
• Alpina (D) another DTM entrant, also fielded a single M3 at Zeltweg
• MK Motorsport (D) 1 car at Zeltweg
• Bruno di Gioia/'Gero' (I) 1 car at Imola
• Garage du Bac (F) 1 car at Nogaro
• Luigi Bello (CH) 1 car at Nogaro
• Andre Grammatico (F) 1 car at Nogaro
• ORECA (F) 1 car at Nogaro

Possibly others, and several also made WTCC appearances, as in the previous post

[KA]

National championships- Heaven only knows how many, but I've been able to find the following so far

DTM

• Zakspeed- 2 cars for Marc Hessel & Eric van de Poele
• Alpina- 2 or 3 cars- Ellen Lohr, Andy Boevensiepen and possibly van der Poele
• Vogelsang- 1 car for Harald Grohs
• Isert- 1 for Olaf Manthey

From the results archive on the DTM website, other M3s appeared for

• Fabien Giroix (is this his regular Garage du Bac car, or an appearance for one of the German teams- possibly Alpina?)
• Volker Strycek
• Thomas von Loewis of Menar
• Robert Walterscheid-Muller
• Josef Gerrold
• Jurgen Matschull
• Manfred Niederhof

Australia
JPS Team BMW -2 cars for Richards & Longhurst, supported by Ludwig Finauer and Robbie Francevic in the long-distance races before Bathurst. The John Sax and Archibald cars also appeared at Sandown

BTCC-
Only M3 appearances in 87 were Frank Sytner's Prodrive car from about mid season- debuted at the British GP meeting I think?