ABOUT

The Build

The first thing I sketched out were the wheel arches. I wanted to make the car obscenely wide while tucking all of the lines inwards into the original body. I did so as a nod to cars from previous decades in an attempt to give the boxy look a bit more agility. In no way would this kind of body work help aerodynamics without some serious redesign, nor is it meant to. It is meant to stand out, to look wide and extravagant.

The second great change was the infinity roof. Taking a page from recent smartphone design and similar concepts already seen in the tuning community, I created a single glass pane spanning the entire greenhouse. I designed it as it would be built IRL without a complete reconstruction - keep the lines, cut the roof off, fit everything into what's left.

The last few changes were to the lights, bumpers and spoiler. These were initially planned to be more convoluted but felt detached from the body. The headlights and rear lightbar breakup the expected lines enough to draw the eye without overpowering the design. The chrome grill was inspired by American muscle cars. I wanted to hide the lamps behind it to give the car a show car vibe. Finally, the wing was redesigned to follow the lines of the new body while maintaining some resemblance to the original.

The Car

The E30 M3 is possibly the most recognizable generation of the medium size two door M line. The grill with integrated headlights, the boxy body and taillights, the proud wing at the rear. These elements held their beauty through fierce competition from their younger siblings. It tied two eras of the Bavarian automaker's design in a unique way and a phenomenal package.

Naturally for this build I sought to bring in elements from both before and after into an eccentric show car package. The wide arches tucked in at the bottom accented with chrome trim are meant to evoke memories from the legendary 3.0 CSL. The same goes for the redesigned front bumper with a flatter design tied into the new arches.

And on the opposite end of the equation I brought some of the mods from the current tuning community such as the LED strips and headlamps. The tail lightbar was inspired by some aftermarket (?) taillights I saw on Hoonigan's Daily Transmission 257 and the cut hood came from Alan Saavedra's S52 powered M3 build featured on SpeedHunters.

The Project

This is my second venture into an 80's DTM contender, the first being a mid-engine 190 Evo II. There is an incredible appeal in the boxiness of the era, as if it were inviting us to stretch out their proportions into track monsters of days past. The M3 is no exception, but having done a performance oriented build before, I leaned towards more of a show car.

I took a bit of an hiatus from these portfolio projects and what began as a warmup became an opportunity to improve my skill and show some love to one of the most recognisable shapes of the 1980's. Like the Supra 7 project, this first iteration is meant to serve as a general baseline, with a second iteration showing off the final goal. In this case, the first version brings the bulk of my work in modelling, material rendering and custom automotive design.

The upcoming second version will primarily focus on exploring a new rendering style, new lighting, virtual camera and compositing. One of the reasons I kept putting off finishing this project was the release of Blender 3.0 with Cycles X. Unfortunately, while a great improvement in many ways, it simply couldn't deliver the style and visual trickery I grew accustomed to with LuxCore. As such, I won't be using Cycles X for the foreseeable future (for portfolio projects).