Bart Maczuga's E92 M3
Photography by Matt Petrie
Alpine White is about as common as you can get when it comes to E92’s, but once again, Bart seems to create a standout look without trying too hard. It is the combination of wheels and a drop along with some minor aero pieces that brings this car together so well. Alright, I lied, there’s a little more to it than just that formula. The difference here can be described simply as “O.Z”. It’s almost unbelievable how loved Futuras are across the board and how well they work on so many different cars. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t like the wheel and for good reason.
When you come across 20” Futura’s on the internet, they are usually mounted on big bodied JDM or VIP cars. To be honest, I have not yet seen a set on a newer BMW chassis. Bart’s setup was pieced together by Stefan of SDW, who sourced the 19” faces and had them redone in a brushed finish and redrilled to 5x120 by Perfect Metal Finishing. Stefan then built the wheels out to a 20” diameter with stepped lips and wider inner barrels. Tightly fitted, aggressive offsets keep the 9.5’s and 10.5’s snug to their fenders while nearly maxed out on PSS10 coilovers.
As I promised in our previous feature of Bart’s F10 535, he is back at, this time in his third E9x M3. Asking yourself why this is his third M3 is totally warranted. He got out of his previous E90 M3 for the featured F10 5 series to get something more comfortable and suitable for him and his wife. After she picked up a vehicle of her own and the mass transit commute increased on his end, Bart knew that it was time to get back in a car from the Motorsports Division as his weekend sanctuary from the office.
Around the car he put his own touch on just about everything in the typical simplistic fashion that Bart does with all of his cars. To pull out the gloss black of the trim and grills, he is sporting a MODE Carbon front lip painted in gloss black. Along the rockers are the Platte Forme A.G. skirt add-ons which tie into the sharp edges of the Exotics Tuning ribbed diffuser. Above the diffuser is the mildly arching Challenge Carbon Kevlar CSL trunk, fully painted in AW to keep the consistency of the car flowing.
His headlights are often a topic of discussion, but only when they are noticed. The traditional LightModz headlight treatment of the blackout and angel eye upgrade that many E9x owners do was not enough for Bart. He wanted to return to what he had done on his previous M3 by adding a small ///M feature inside the headlight. With his last E92 it came in the form of the M stripes on the driver's side shroud. This time around, he had LightModz add motorsports splatter to the driver’s side shroud to subtly add a splash of color to the monochromatic car.
Visually this car is a perfect ten, but audibly this car is off the charts. Literally, the decibel reading of the Innotech Performance F1 Exhaust with their Valvetronic system in the opened position is somewhere in the neighborhood of 120db and that is for their full system. Bart is combining the iPE rear with a Gintani X-pipe. Having personally driven E92's with both exhaust setups, I'd have to say Bart's is slightly louder. Aside from splitting hairs, It is still banned from race tracks such as Monticello Motor Club and Lime Rock Park. In their defense, those tracks are located in rural suburban neighborhoods so they are stricter than other tracks as far as decibel readings go.
The beauty of the iPE is their wireless remote for volume control. The iPE is a vacuum-actuated exhaust which utilizes a pressure line in “AUTO” mode allowing the valves to open up at a specific RPM as set through the DME. Quickly, at the touch of a button, the “CLOSED” setting becomes a very tame sound that will allow you to hit the aforementioned race tracks, roll home through your neighborhood at 2am, or sneak past a state trooper shooting radar on the highway. Aside from those types of circumstantial situations, when there’s an option for full “OPEN” to let the S65 constantly scream unrestricted, is there really another worthy choice?
Other than picking up a set of BBS LM-R’s to swap back and forth from the Futuras, he is satisfied with the car in its current state, as anyone would be. That being said, Bart already has his sights on an M upgrade. I’ll sign off here as I did with his past feature in closing off of another chapter in Bart’s Ultimate Klasse car log.