Specialty File
BMW's M5 is a fantastic car, but it has evolved over the years from a mid-size hot rod to a gentleman's express, becoming more, shall we say, luxurious in the process. Drivers wanting a more responsive, compact sports sedan might be better off looking at the M3.
But the M5's V-8 engine still makes a very compelling argument. Okay, then, why not put the M5's V-8 into a 3-series body? That idea also occurred to Herbert Hartge, owner of a reputable BMW tuner company in Beckingen, Germany.
So he started work on the conversions. They're so good that another BMW tuner-Racing Dynamics-is reported to have leased one of the half-dozen existing H50s (Hartge's name for BMW's V-8-powered E46) from a customer and passed it off as RD's own product at the Essen auto show, using camouflaged pieces to disguise the car's origins.
The car you see here is Herbert Hartge's personal H50, on brief loan to his company's local distributor, DAZZ Motorsport, in Baldwin Park, California. DAZZ allowed us to test the car and run laps at the Streets of Willow at Willow Springs International Motorsports Park in Southern California, where it was soon apparent that this is a pretty immaculate conversion.
Shoehorning the M5's potent V-8 and six-speed manual into a BMW 3-series body is no mean feat. It's no longer than the original six, so the fire wall remains untouched, but it is much wider-so much so that the steering column had to be routed through the left exhaust header spaghetti, and the oil circulation must pass through the left engine mount. Otherwise, it's a stock motor with a reprogrammed chip and a revised engine speed limiter that will allow the tach needle to spin to the far side of seven grand. Oops!
Despite the M5 engine's famous torque spread and the car's lighter bodywork, this H50 runs shorter-than-M5 gearing-a 3.15:1 axle vs. 2.81. We recorded a 4.5-second sprint to 60 mph and a quarter-mile time of 12.9 seconds at 113 mph, but achieving those numbers required some deft footwork. The H50 smokes the rear tires if you drop the clutch with any kind of revs on the dial.
To hook it up, we had to let in the clutch at little more than idle speed, and even then the car would still smoke the fat 265/30ZR-19 Pirelli P7000s if we went abruptly to full throttle. Then, if we shifted out of first gear too exuberantly, the tires would spin well into second. All this with a fairly decent weight distribution of 53 percent up front and 47 percent in the rear.
Are you getting the picture here? This car is strong-nearly 400 hp strong-and it has tons of torque available across the engine's range. On the Streets course, this translates into telescoped straights, where you find yourself threshold-braking even when you weren't planning to, just to get slowed down for the bends.
On the exit of those bends, any over enthusiasm on the part of your right foot will push this car into power oversteer. Yeahhh, baby! But it's not like the car is way loose or anything. On the contrary, it's set up tautly, with lowered and stiffened springs, firm shocks, and beefy bars, and it will understeer at the limit as its maker intended until you get on the loud pedal.
It's actually pretty hard to be smooth in the H50 on a tortuous track like the Streets without serious self-restraint. Overdriving it is almost an automatic response among those of us with the extra X-chromosome until we realize the need to slow our inputs down to go faster. Then the H50 moves around the track with deadly force. Its taut control calibration feels very BMW like, and the conversion has successfully captured the essence of the Bavarian marque.
That's not too surprising. Hartge has been undertaking conversion work on BMWs for quite some time, putting 5.0-liter versions of the 540 and 740 V-8s into Z3s, M coupes, and 3-series bodies, among other things. Practice makes perfect, and even with the many add-ons-there's a page full of body additions, interior trim pieces, replacement instrumentation, and tire and wheel combinations available in the Hartge catalog-the H50 looks just as a hot 3-series BMW should.
For American customers, a local 328i or 330i is shipped to Germany for the conversion. The finished product will look something like a U.S-market BMW, but with whatever body kit and wheels you ordered. Twenty-inch wheels (requiring a 25-series rear tire) are available if you desire repeated visits to the wheel-straightening shop.
Come to think of it, the H50 will probably never look terribly much like a U.S.-market BMW. The Hartge insignia and V-8 badges will give the game away immediately, even to clowns who fail to notice the James Earl Jones exhaust note.
Not unexpectedly, the H50 is priced the way a hot aftermarket BMW usually is-in this case, about $120,000. The good news is that the price includes the donor car. The bad news? Hartge will only do about a half-dozen H50s each year, so even if you did cash out big-time after the IPO, you might not be able to get one.
DAZZ Motorsport, 5121 Commerce Drive, Baldwin Park, California 91706; 626-962-0033; www.hartge.de.
