More doors open for M3

A four-door M3 has already been revealed but the German company has much bigger plans, with a convertible and a six-speed manu-matic gearbox both in the works for 2008.

The droptop M3 should be previewed in Europe before the first local deliveries of the M3 sedan, in the second half of the year, but there is no confirmation yet of the M DCT gearbox.

It is part of a plan to expand the reach and appeal of the M3 as it faces up to the considerable challenge of the new Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG, which will come to Australia with more power and at a lower price than its BMW rival.

BMW is strongly focused on the dual-clutch transmission, which, like a similar system in the Volkswagen Golf GTi, promises near-constant power delivery with a seamless shift system that has gears constantly in mesh for instant up-changes and down-changes.

The DCT gearbox promises to make the M3 faster and easier to drive, but it will come with a price penalty. And no one from the company is talking about its timing or any other details.

But BMW Australia says, indirectly, the M3 convertible is coming and should be ready for the road within six months.

“From an Australian perspective, the convertible has been part of the M3 line-up in the past,” BMW Australia spokesman Toni Andreevski says.

“We would be very confident about introducing a convertible again. An M3 convertible would slot nicely into the line-up. It was a successful seller for us, in Australia and worldwide, in the previous generation.”

In the previous generation, convertible sales outstripped the four-door sedan.

The M3 coupe is already a sell-out in Australia with a three-month waiting list, but BMW is pushing hard to get existing M3 owners into new cars and also to win converts to the V8-powered pocket rocket.

“We have quite a large customer base for the M3 in Australia. It's more than 2000 people. If you add up all the rivals, they only come to about 600,” Andreevski says.

“The M3 coupe is sold out until about April or May. So that is another three or four months' wait for deliveries.”

And it will be supply, not demand, that will set the final sales figure for 2008. “We will probably do somewhere between 300 and 400. That's what we'll get,” Andreevski says.

That number will rise to more than 500 cars in 2009 with the arrival of the sedan, convertible and M DCT gearbox, even if Andreevski will not reveal any firm details.

“They would be add-ons. That would be extra volume,” he says. “We think there will be healthy demand for a four-door M3. But we are still going through the business case at the moment. If we go ahead, the first cars could arrive by the end of this year.”