Tag Archives: 3-Series

The Ultimate Driving Machine

1 Reply

BMW’s ‘E30’ generation 3-Series has become a cult car. Small, light, rear-wheel-drive, and without an over-complicated twin-scroll turbo in sight, the E30 is the antidote to whatever horror BMW is making these days.

Cue TLCB favourite Thirdwigg, who has recreated the late-’80s BMW 3-Series brilliantly in Technic form. Built in both sedan and estate forms, Thirdwigg’s E30s are subtly modified with lowered suspension, a modest body-kit, and – in the case of the sedan – a V8 engine swap.

We’d rather take the estate’s Inline-6 though, and with free building instructions for both (a hundred TLCB Points Thirdwigg!), presumably you can switch out the sedan’s V8 engine with ease. There’s also working steering, opening everything, and much more to see at both Flickr and Eurobricks. Jump back to a time when BMW’s marketing tagline actually meant something via the links above.

E36

Leave a reply

BMWs have a weird lifecycle in TLCB’s home market. Mass-market Germanic greyness when new, they become increasingly popular with the scumbag portion of the population as their age increases and value drops.

During this phase many are poorly maintained, even more poorly modified, and then scrapped when something expensive inevitably breaks. But for the few that dodge the hands of the scumbags, a sunny future of classic status awaits.

The E36 3-Series is not yet at that point, but it’s not far off, making now the perfect time to buy. If you can find one that hasn’t been scumbagged of course.

Fuku Saku‘s BMW 3-Series E36 Coupe – with its big wing, bodykit and phat exhaust – is probably a car to steer well clear of in real life, but happily in brick form is rather excellent, and captures the E36 in its current usually-spotted state brilliantly.

A wealth of top-quality imagery is available to view, and you can check out Fuku’s E36 on Flickr via the link. Take a look whilst we trawl the ads to try and find one of the last remaining good ones.

Pink & Slippy

1 Reply

This is resolutely not this TLCB Writer’s kind of car. But the rest of the staff are ‘busy’ in the corridor doing something with a remote control bulldozer and some Elven ‘volunteers’, so it falls to him to write about a pink drift-pig BMW.

That said, whilst this model is based on a real and eye-searing car, Fuku Saku‘s brick-built homage to the sideways E36 is thoroughly excellent, being both instantly recognisable as an E36 3-Series Coupe, and managing to replicate the drifty modifications of the real thing.

The doors and hood open to reveal further cleverness within, and there’s more to see of Fuku’s E36 Drift Car at his album of the same name on Flickr. Click the link above to go sliding about in something pink.

No School Like the Old School

Leave a reply

BMW’s M-cars have got ever more capable, and ever more silly. The latest M3 is phenomenal machine that is almost pointlessly over-powered. Still, it’s not an X6M so that’s worth celebrating.

Back in the 1980s BMW’s M-cars weren’t all about power though, as demonstrated by the first M3. The ‘E30’ series was only a four-cylinder and it only had around 200bhp, but it was small, light and agile, making about a billion times more fun than the current version. Which is why the values of E30 M3s have gone stratospheric.

Luckily SP_LINEUP has created a more attainable version, via his superb mildly modified 8-wide model, complete with opening doors and hood, and a roll cage inside the detailed interior. Head to Flickr via the link above to see more of SP’s brick-built recreation of the first – and best – M3 that BMW ever made.