A G80 BMW M3 For Civic Money, If You Have The Skills

While this M3’s original chassis couldn’t be saved, the car still lives on.
An Instagrammer purchased a new chassis from BMW and rebuilt the car.
If there’s any modern sports sedan worth saving, the G80 M3 is it.

Most insurance adjusters would have looked at this M3 Competition and stamped it a total loss without breaking stride. For one enthusiast in Germany, the same caved-in side panel was the starting point for a build that would have made most professional shops think twice.

There are plenty of prominent automotive YouTubers who specialize in rebuilding crash-damaged cars, and while this gentleman, who runs his Instagram channel under the handle s55_M2, hasn’t put together any feature-length videos on the process of saving this M3, he has posted several clips along the way. They show that the driver’s side of the Bimmer was destroyed in the crash, leaving the chassis completely unusable.

Watch: See A Police Officer Cheat Death In Crazy BMW M3 Smash

With no safe way to repair the chassis, he somehow managed to source an entirely new one from BMW and began the arduous process of salvaging parts from the original car and transplanting them into the new chassis.

It appears that the powertrain from the crashed car, including the eight-speed transmission, has been salvaged and installed in the new chassis. Additionally, the original wiring harness appears to have been moved, as well as some of the exterior panels. Presumably, most of the M3’s interior parts were saved and also used to bring the car back from the dead.

Should I Try The Same?

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Obviously, building an M3 from the ground up in your garage is something only the most experienced DIYers should even consider. However, if you have the skills, doing this could be much cheaper than buying a brand-new one or even finding one on the used-car market.

We haven’t been able to determine how much buying a new chassis from BMW would cost, but in response to a comment asking whether he spent “$20k” on the rebuild, the man behind this project says “almost.” Given that the wrecked M3 was probably bought for pennies on the dollar, this might be the cheapest route anyone has found to a set of G80 M3 keys.