If you're BMW and your previous M3 already has garnered every accolade worth winning—including Automobile of the Year—you give the new version more of a good thing. For the third-generation M3, that means more engine, more wheel, more brake, more gears, more room, more luxurious appointments, more electronic gadgetry, and, inevitably, a more expensive price.
The product of these upgrades is a car that deserves to be called—if the expression hadn't been appropriated already by less worthy candidates—the world's ultimate sport-utility vehicle. No automobile on sale offers a more felicitous combination of grunt, grip, grace, and everyday practicality.
Based on the 3-series BMW, the M3 is perfectly content in the slow lane, hauling groceries or trundling through traffic. But the myriad M-for-Motorsport touches—most notably, 333 horsepower at an exhilarating 7900 rpm running through a six-speed manual or a Formula 1-style paddle-shift sequential manual gearbox—allow drivers to indulge their wildest Michael Schumacher fantasies.
If anything, the 2002 M3 is too much of a good thing. Besides driving out-the-door prices well beyond $50,000, all the bells and whistles have turned the car into a sophisticated GT lacking the visceral knife's-edge appeal of past M3s. At the same time, the car is now so enormously capable that it can't be exercised properly anywhere but on a racetrack.
But these aren't flaws so much as caveats. If you want a car that doubles as plaything and workhorse, the M3 has got it all.