Flying the flag for BMW's performance division over the years, the BMW M3 was only designed to be a race car, but through homologation rules, the hot little 3 Series quickly became one of BMW's most sought after cars, and things only got better from there.
If you are a BMW fan, you'll be familiar with the iconic boxy little E30 M3, which offered outstanding performance for its time, and set the standard for what customers could expect from the German performance car going forward.
Fast forward two generations of the M3 (skipping the humble, but iconic E36) we are greeted with the rounding lines and raspy six-cylinder engine of the E46. To a lot of BMW fans, this car was the perfect combination of sporty race car lines and bulges, sleek German design, and middle-of-the-road sizing.
Sitting under that bulging hood is arguably the best part of the whole car, a 3.2-litre S54 inline-six engine that would happily rev to 8000rpm, and produce a maximum of 246kW and 355Nm of torque throughout that huge range.
This allowed for the curvy coupe to make the 0-100km/h sprint in just 4.8 seconds, which was a time that could compete with supercars of its time, but offer daily driven German luxury.
Many claim that this BMW was the last M3 that had an analogue feel to it. It featured a lot of manual aspects that were upgraded to autonomous systems after its release such as the dipstick and steering settings.
All these goodies combine to create a car that many label as the best M3 that BMW ever built, but it seems that the market is well aware of this, and E46' are full picking up value at an alarming rate.
Earlier this year, a pristine manual E46 M3 sold for a whopping $135,000 at auction in the US. Surprisingly, the car with 25,000km on the clock was significantly modified, but this didn't stop hopeful buyers from bidding.
It can be argued that the prices of E46 M3s in New Zealand have already skyrocketed, but considering that they are still comfortably within the five-figure range, there's a lot more room for prices to move.
Currently, there are two E46 M3 models listed on our site, a silver hardtop coupe with 67,000km on the clock, and a black convertible with just 41,000km.
Both models are fitted with the SMG transmission, which knocks their value a little lower than their manual-fitted counterparts, but they're still a very capable semi-automatic transmission.
To wrap this up, there's no doubt that prices of the German coupe have already inflated, but if the rest of the world's market is anything to go off, things have only just started.