Yet Another E30 Project Car---Unlike Any Other E30 Project Car---The M-Touring.
Part 4: Body
To summarize up to this point: we have transferred the steering and suspension of our E30 M3 parts car over to our E30 Touring wagon. We have also switched the E30 M3 brakes, hubs and wheels to the Touring. And what was the result? A car that rode, drove, and stopped just like an E30 M3. A great car, but clearly not enough for an excessive, compulsive guy like me, so the bodywork had to come next.
The parts car had one undamaged front M3 fender, the M3 side skirts, the puffy rear quarter panels, and the M3 rear bumper. We had to buy one front fender new (ouch! M-parts!). We needed a new front bumper and air dam, but we nearly fainted when we priced the original M3 parts. Fortunately, Chris Wofford at BMP helped us out here, and we chose the less expensive BMP flexible plastic one-piece bumper/air dam combination, which looks similar to the original M3 bumper.
Mounting that bumper took a little bit of fabrication, but not much. The
BMP bumper is made specifically to fit
the early big-bumper E30 cars and it comes
with some nice hefty center mounts that attach where the old bumper shocks used to
attach. Our car is a late E30 that came with small bumpers, so some drilling and
bolting was necessary. Additionally, no brackets to support the outer corners were
supplied, so Paul Webb made us some simple supports.
The front fenders were a simple bolt on, as were the side skirts and the rear bumper.
