A one-off straight-six from the E34 BMW M5 is reborn in this purpose-built drag weapon
Frequent Driving.ca visitors may have recently read about the BMW M1 Group B, which, in my round-up of unexpected rally cars, I called ‘arguably the most baffling motorsport campaign to ever bear the Bavarian badge.’
I’d like to thank the internet for immediately proving me wrong.
The below is a 2017 BMW M5-bodied drag car, an already mental prospect made all the more awesome by the M-division stripes plastered down the flanks.
It’s built by South African Bimmer specialist Budler Motorsport, and, interestingly, rather than opting for a tried, tested and well-established Toyota 2JZ or heavier-duty American V8, rocks a full balls-to-the-wall engine selected by team owner and namesake Boetie Budler.
The new powerplant came about by developing an engine from scratch, using the factory ‘S38’ straight-six found at the heart of an E34 M5 as its foundation.
Cloying as the phrase has become, this 219-cubic-inch beast truly is a one-off build, the block incorporating custom billet camshafts, new aftermarket rods and pistons, and a 98-mm Precision ProMod turbocharger among other mods, for lung-rattling grunt.
Absolute power has not yet been made public, but we’re guessing even the 3.8-litre E34’s 340 hp has gone up a smidge, as proven by the performance alone.
In its first major overseas campaign, the Budler Motorsports BMW was shipped more than 13,000 km to Maryland International Raceway for the Import vs Domestic: World Cup Finals. Fresh out the box, the M5 ran a 6.90-second quarter-mile at 202 mph (325 km/h). Which is pretty sprightly.
That wasn’t enough though for the Budler crew or fabricator-slash-driver Marius Oosthuizen, who promptly upped the boost to watch the times tumble through 6.78 seconds, then 6.76, 6.69, 6.53 and, finally, 6.515 seconds at 215 mph (around 346 km/h) in the car’s final run of the tournament.
If you’d like to hear how that sounds, headphones out, volume up, and apologise to your neighbours.
Impressively, despite achieving its 6.5-second objective, Budler Motorsports has claimed it will return to the US once the full limits of the engine are known.