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1) In all fairness to the DCT, most of the issues and complaints have been addressed with reprogramming. It is now a viable and trackable transmission... a world of improvement over the SMGIII.
2) In response to "Got back from Mschool a month ago and the instructors told me that the power steering has overheating issues but they said most people don't drive the car hard enough to have the issue. They have had the issue happen on many M3s."
This is diturbing on many levels. The target audiance is track junkies like us. The owners manual even mentions it. The perofrmance center that holds the M-School is owned and operated by BMW. Is it not the ultimate beta test to have new M3 owners beat the snot out of their cars, many of whom have tons of experience?!? Sounds like a perfect scenario for product improvement.
3) In response to "You ask too much for a sporty street car, it's not a racecar. Once you start to beat on it regularly at the track any car will have issues."
Uh, no. All these maladies simply don't have to be present. They are avoidable. If a manufacturer is going to market a car as being track-worthy, then they should engineer it with the expectation that their customers are going to drive them on the track. So there is no excuse for all these little things to get in the way. Fixing any or all of them wouldn't affect their streetability. If you can get a $30K Nissan or Hyumdai with Brembo's, then there's no reason why a $60K+ car can't have them. And so on.
4) As for the tires, I understand they are not track tires. But they aren't even a suitable compromise. The Continentals that BMW fits on the M-School cars perform more consistently without overheating, and on heavier cars (M5 and M6)!
I'm not really a chronic complainer... it's jsut that this one more thing to worry about with my M3 at the track put me over the edge. And getting beat by a less experienced driver in a GTR didn't help! I still love the car... just a bit perturbed. Sorry for the rant.
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