BMW M3 track day!

The first words you hear when you tell someone you’ve just been rocketing around a race track are always the same: “Wow. How fast did you go?”

Sadly, my answer to this is always a disappointment: “I have no idea; I was too scared to look.”

So, last week, when I was invited to tackle BMW’s mumbo-tastic M3 for the first time in the challenging environs of Eastern Creek, I decided to fix this.

As hard as it was to keep the speedo needle in focus, because it moves clockwise at such a fierce pace, I did my best.

And the numbers I saw do tell at least part of the story about what a beast this car is.

Coming out of the hairpin Turn 9 and pelting towards the kinky Turn 10, the M3 rocketed to 180km/h… in third gear.

Yes, “wow” is the appropriate response to that, although I think it sounded like “ow”, or “ow my God” from the driver’s seat.

The way the bravura Beemer went from a lazy 120km/h coming out of the final Turn 13 to 220km/h down the straight (I think it was in fifth by then, sixth gear being, obviously, for cruising at its limited top speed of 250km/h) can only be described as effortless.

A proper driver would have been going a lot faster before dropping back to fourth – a down-change I struggled with several times, which probably has more to do with my shaking hands than any gearbox foibles – and hurling into the Creek’s testicular Turn One.

Glancing away from the blurring horizon for a split second, I noted that we were doing a ballistic 170km/h at the midpoint of the corner. Again, wow, but nowhere near as wow as the pro steerers, who would easily carry 200km/h plus through there.

And there’s so much torque, everywhere that you have to reassess your gear choices. You really don’t need second at all around the Creek, unless you just want to make a lot of noise.

The new, V8-throated M3 is quick, then. Quick like Adam Spencer, or Robin Williams. Quick like Ben Johnson. Quick like a Porsche, but much cheaper.

I’d known this would be the case, of course, because I’d salivated over the specs like the rest of you – 0 to 100km/h in 4.8 seconds, a full 0.4 seconds faster than the already awesome old car.

You know that’s fast, but you have to feel it to believe it, just like the fact that it can go from 100km/h back to zero in 2.4 seconds.

What makes the car such a terrific track weapon is that braking ability. You can go harder, deeper and later than ever before, and that makes for one adrenaline-surge of a lap.

I’d also seen the pictures before we met, but they don’t do justice to just how hulking the presence of this new super coupe is. The bonnet bulge, the flared nostrils, the quad pipes and rear spoiler.

This car has all the visual aggression that early Q car versions of the M3 eschewed, and then some.

It’s also got the sexiest roof in the business – not a phrase I’ve written very often – because it’s made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic, to reduce weight and lower the centre of gravity. And to look very cool.

Beneath that bulky, hulky bonnet sits the raging heart of the new machine – four litres of pure goodness, producing 309kW and 400Nm, and revving to a stop-it-my-ears-hurt 8400rpm.

Only your ears don’t really hurt, in practice, they just sing.

Particularly from 5000rpm upwards, the point at which all eight throttle bodies open and the beast is let fully off the leash.

It’s a deep, sonorous scream but, as lustrous as it is, I still prefer the unique note of the old, comparatively weedy six-cylinder M3, which sounded heavy metallic.

Of course, now that this version exists, you’d never really want to go back.

The best news of all, though, is that what really made the old car, and the M3s before it, so good is still what’s best about the new one – the way it steers and handles.

The new uber 3 feels heavier in the hands, but not in an unpleasant way – it just seems beefier than before, like you’ve gone from wrestling a steer to throttling a wildebeest.

This car is beautifully balanced and wonderfully chuckable, and the sport settings for the traction control allow you to let it slide out the tail just enough to be exciting.

Heart in your cheeks, sweat on your backside exciting.

In fact, the new M3 is so track-tastic that, I must admit, it intimidated me for, ohh, about 10 laps.

Then I had about five laps where I was really, really enjoying myself – hooting and hollering with joy at how good it felt to corner, how hard it kicked my spine under full throttle – and then a final three laps where I thought “Hey, you should really go back into the pits before you get hurt, Mr Thinks He’s a Boy Racer.”

Of course, all these speeds and thrills are a million miles away from the real world, and I’m yet to drive BMW’s new hero on an actual real-world street, but first impressions are very important.

And my first impression is that, for $157,000, BMW is offering you a superlative, semi-supercar for what is, relatively speaking, a bargain price.

And it’s not often you see the words “bargain” and “BMW” in the same sentence.