A good friend of mine used to be a BMW tech. He had a 318 hatchback he picked up for $300 (I don’t remember the year). He was working on making it a race car. He had a GM LS 5.3 with a 6sp manual and mount kit. He also managed to get a M3 rear diff and suspension for it. The plan was to get it all bolted up and driving and then twin turbo it.This afternoon, my youngest and I took a look at a potential track car candidate. He currently drives an 88 E30 with an M50 swap on track days and has been wanting to build a new, more track focused car. This is what we looked at. It's a 98 BMW 328i with a bad slushbox transmission. We just happen to have a good manual transmission, drives haft, lsd and pedal box with a clutch pedal.
It's remarkably solid given that it's been sitting for a long time. The price is in his budget, too. That is, it's free. I'm thinking that we'll drag it home some time this spring and work on bringing it back to life. It should be fun.
Unfortunately he turned out to be a major A hole and my sister divorced him. I’ve hardly talked to him since and he sold everything off. It would’ve been an awesome car.