So, I had a fast, practical replacement for my Smart Roadster Coupe. I also had a car that has a huge and established tuning and modification industry set up for it.
After the rather restricted options available for my Ferrari F355 Spider, Suzuki Cappuccino and Smart, I was like a kid in a toy shop: so many shiny things to buy…

It was soon clear that the first area that needed attending to was the decidedly non-shiny suspension. The rather inconsistent handling, incredibly low ground clearance and crashy ride were obvious symptoms of springs and shocks that had seen better days. A bit of surfing on the interweb lead me to CA Automotive who seemed to be well stocked specialists for M3s of all vintages. A quick chat with friendly and knowledgeable MD, Roy, and some new Bilstein shocks, Eibach springs and a Wiechers Sport strut brace were on their way. He also suggested that one of the biggest improvements would come from retrofitting the under-chassis cross brace that BMW developed for the convertible version of the E36.
I also spoke to the ever-helpful people at Powerflex who supplied a full set of their polyurethane suspension bushes as it was a reasonable assumption that the originals were now well past their best.

As for whom to entrust to fitting all these components, I had no hesitation in using Racing Technologies, a Wandsworth based workshop that mainly specialises in Ferraris and Lancias, but has a very successful reputation in preparing race cars including M3s. I've known Elias for years (he used to work with Verdi on my F355) and Peter Ward used to do some work on Godzilla 1.
So once all the parts had arrived at their workshop, I drove the M3 down to them and left it in their capable hands for a couple of days.

It turned out that the AC Schnitzer springs had completely corroded and partially collapsed on some corners, hence the Pimp My Ride stance. The new springs, whilst still slightly lower than standard M3 Evolution ones, were proper progressive rate items and perfectly matched to the Bilstein dampers. The cross brace and front strut brace were complemented by an AC Schnitzer rear brace that Elias pulled off one of his project E36s and the Powerflex bushes were apparently difficult to fit, but looked like they were going to be infinitely more effective than the very worn original rubber ones.
More importantly than all the hardware was the expertise with which Elias and Peter set the car up. They both know my driving style and tried to minimise understeer with careful corner-weighting and rake adjustment. It's not common to be able to have your road car set up like a race car, by a race team, but if you have the means, I highly recommend you try it.

I was very excited about finding out the net result of the changes and within the first few, gentle corners the transformation was obvious. There was a sharpness to the turn-in that was previously entirely lacking and the steering response was far more linear.
Even more apparent was the improvement in the ride and body control. I no longer had to wince going over sharp compressions and even speed humps were now navigable albeit at low speeds. There was also a dramatic step change in ride comfort with no more sharp jolts through the chassis and no unexpected meeting of bump stops and dampers.
I had feared that the polyurethane bushes would introduce some harshness and noise, but compared to how the BM was before they were fitted, the ride seemed positively Jag-like.

Now that the understeer had been quelled, I was still slightly disappointed that the rear tyres were still very reluctant to relinquish their grip, the 255/35 ZR18 Dunlop SP Sport 9000s hanging on annoyingly well, even in the wet.
Well, we'd soon see about that: nothing a healthy surfeit of power shouldn't be able to sort out…