- 2,263
- Vancouver
- mr_lab_rat
No, we are not going to talk about sleeping in the car although there is enough room for me to do so. This is a short story about wolf in sheep's clothing.
This is what the car looks like now. Somewhat sporty grocery/kids hauler, right? It's actually a bit more sporty than it looks.
North America hates wagons for some reason. They are very popular in Europe and you can buy some very nice high performance models. BMW only brought the 325 (2.5 liter 6 cylinder with 184hp) here and most of them had automatic transmissions.
My wife unexpectedly doubled the size of our family (twins) so my 325 coupe was no longer practical. I wanted to stay with BMW but I was a bit disappointed with their new car offerings.
So I decided to build my own sport wagon ...
It started by several month long search that resulted in finding this gem:
High mileage, ugly aftermarket mirrors and fiberglass body kit, paint chipping off from DIY colour matched body moldings, interior full of dog hair. But the potential was there.
At first I just wanted to swap in an engine from the 330 model (225hp). I already had a stage 1 twinscrew supercharger from my 325 at home for added performance. I would just have to clean up the looks.
So I pulled out the credit card and first parts started to arrive (engine and OEM sideskirts):
With the engine out it was very easy to do a lot of preventative maintenance so I ordered just about every gasket, hose, sensor, and other replacement parts I could (this is only about one third of all parts):
Time to start taking things apart, it's easier to pull the engine with the front of the car removed:
Halfway through the project things started to snowball a bit. I was thinking that when I'm already putting in this much work I might as well go all in. So I ordered a stage 2 upgrade (injectors, smaller pulley to raise boost to 8.5 PSI, air to liquid intercooler). The car came with 5 speed transmission rated for 250lbs of torque and it started to look like I would be putting over 370 through it. Oh well, I always wanted a 6 speed anyway.
Now that I was expecting more power and needed to change the differential anyway I ordered limited slip gears from Quaife and some boost and AFR gauges to be hidden in the sunglasses holder:
Showtime, out with old:
In with the new:
With the new engine in I was pretty sure it would drive well so I decided to make it look good:
The car runs! You can barely see the supercharger on the right side of the engine. If you don't know what it's supposed look like it will appear pretty stock.
Yeah, but what about that wheel gap?
Billstein has the answer (PSS10)
Dyno time! This was taken on a Mustang dyno that typically reads lower than a Dynojet. Still, with calculating 17% drivetrain loss it outputs close to 400hp and over 350lbs of torque from 2500 to 6000 RPMs.
With the gauges hidden behind the sunglasses holder flip door the car looks pretty stock. An M3 steering wheel, 265/35/18 rear tires, and lower ride height might give hints that the car is modified but not many people expect this level of performance from a wagon (again, things are a bit different in Europe but I'm talking about this side of the world).
So was it worth the time and money? Would I do it again? Hell yes, it was fun. I had no previous experience working on cars. My biggest job prior to this was changing my own brake pads. I learned a lot and enjoyed every minute of it. Now the car puts a smile on my face when just looking at it and an evil grin everytime I press the accelerator pedal
This is what the car looks like now. Somewhat sporty grocery/kids hauler, right? It's actually a bit more sporty than it looks.
North America hates wagons for some reason. They are very popular in Europe and you can buy some very nice high performance models. BMW only brought the 325 (2.5 liter 6 cylinder with 184hp) here and most of them had automatic transmissions.
My wife unexpectedly doubled the size of our family (twins) so my 325 coupe was no longer practical. I wanted to stay with BMW but I was a bit disappointed with their new car offerings.
So I decided to build my own sport wagon ...
It started by several month long search that resulted in finding this gem:
High mileage, ugly aftermarket mirrors and fiberglass body kit, paint chipping off from DIY colour matched body moldings, interior full of dog hair. But the potential was there.
At first I just wanted to swap in an engine from the 330 model (225hp). I already had a stage 1 twinscrew supercharger from my 325 at home for added performance. I would just have to clean up the looks.
So I pulled out the credit card and first parts started to arrive (engine and OEM sideskirts):
With the engine out it was very easy to do a lot of preventative maintenance so I ordered just about every gasket, hose, sensor, and other replacement parts I could (this is only about one third of all parts):
Time to start taking things apart, it's easier to pull the engine with the front of the car removed:
Halfway through the project things started to snowball a bit. I was thinking that when I'm already putting in this much work I might as well go all in. So I ordered a stage 2 upgrade (injectors, smaller pulley to raise boost to 8.5 PSI, air to liquid intercooler). The car came with 5 speed transmission rated for 250lbs of torque and it started to look like I would be putting over 370 through it. Oh well, I always wanted a 6 speed anyway.
Now that I was expecting more power and needed to change the differential anyway I ordered limited slip gears from Quaife and some boost and AFR gauges to be hidden in the sunglasses holder:
Showtime, out with old:
In with the new:
With the new engine in I was pretty sure it would drive well so I decided to make it look good:
The car runs! You can barely see the supercharger on the right side of the engine. If you don't know what it's supposed look like it will appear pretty stock.
Yeah, but what about that wheel gap?
Billstein has the answer (PSS10)
Dyno time! This was taken on a Mustang dyno that typically reads lower than a Dynojet. Still, with calculating 17% drivetrain loss it outputs close to 400hp and over 350lbs of torque from 2500 to 6000 RPMs.
With the gauges hidden behind the sunglasses holder flip door the car looks pretty stock. An M3 steering wheel, 265/35/18 rear tires, and lower ride height might give hints that the car is modified but not many people expect this level of performance from a wagon (again, things are a bit different in Europe but I'm talking about this side of the world).
So was it worth the time and money? Would I do it again? Hell yes, it was fun. I had no previous experience working on cars. My biggest job prior to this was changing my own brake pads. I learned a lot and enjoyed every minute of it. Now the car puts a smile on my face when just looking at it and an evil grin everytime I press the accelerator pedal
I can see you've got a few more things than those listed, if you can please post everything you changed because it looks like quite an interesting project that was tastefully done. How long did it take? Also, did you consider E46 M3 mirrors? The aftermarket E36ish ones do indeed look terrible but I like the E46/39M ones a little more than the squares.
