New R&T article; aka Mazda MP3 BEATS BMW M3!!

"WTF!" you say. "The Mazda MP3, a Japanese, $20,000 four door POS has beaten our beautiful, wonderful, overrated [ok, I added that part] e46 M3?!!! It can't be!"

Ah, mon ami, but it can!!

Go out and get the latest Road and Track, the one with the green cover and the Lotus Elise looking all blurry. Read the cover story, about the handling tests. Well, the Porsche 911 Turbo was voted best on the street while the Ferrari 360 Modena was voted best on the track. What I don't get is why they chose these high-buck rides when there are a lot of better-handling cars out there, but I digress.

There WAS one NON-high buck ride in there: the Mazda MP3. And get this. . . the e46 M3 was the <b>only car in the test to acieve lower than .90g on the skidpad</b>!! Someone tell me what's wrong with this picture! Is the Mazda MP3 out BMWing BMW by building a better four-door?

For some reason, I would think that the M5 would have faired better in this test with its higher torque at lower RPMs.

Any thoughts, bitchings, complainings?

Brad Couvillon
<a href="http://www.fatdaddybmw.com/bimmer.html">'87 528e</a>

Because there's a LOT more to chassis dynamics than steady-state cornering. Heck, my Grand Cherokee feels pretty good on a constant corner, but heaven help me if I had to dodge somethign while going around that same steady state corner.

. . . the MP3 won that, too:

67.4 for the M3
70.2 for the MP3

The only thing lower than the M3's 67.4 was 67.3 by the Vette Z06. Naturally, the Elise won the slalom by a huge margin (almost a full 3 MPH!)

Brad

I'll place my money on the M3, thank you.