As it tumbled down into Castellane, feeling almost weightless, sweeping through turns in its great, almost elastic sweet-spot, the relatively humble BMW M3 jumped right to the top of my list.

I found a Laguna Seca Blue E46 BMW M3 abandoned on the side of a race track last year. I bought it and decided to restore it, working through all the common problems and some not so common problems.

Now, I’ve not met the former three, but this writer is lucky to have known a few generations of the BMW 3 Series and for ... hatch based on the E30. The E46 (1998-2005) was an evolution of ...