When you buy a sports car, the urge to start changing things hits you fast.
And I mean really fast. It’s the kind of feeling where you think, “Who needs a warranty? Let’s rip out the seats and drop in carbon-fiber buckets right now!” People have been doing this for years. If you talk to your dads American muscle-car buddy, he’ll probably tell you about the time he and his buddies rented a 1967 GT500 Mustang and swapped the engine with one from his own car in a single weekend… Wild right?
Today, car companies sell sports cars that already come packed with upgrades. But even then, new owners still can’t resist smashing their piggy banks to add more mods the second they get the keys.
Take this brand new BMW M2 for example; painted in a soft baby-blue color that looks calm and sweet… just don’t let that fool you. Under the hood is a 3-liter twin-turbo inline-6 engine with 480 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque. It’s a two-door coupe that’s half luxury, half monster. With a price tag of about $68,000.
Compare that to the Mercedes SL550, which weighs in around the $115,000 mark. The Mercedes has a big 4.7-liter twin-turbo V8 with 449 horsepower and 516 lb-ft of torque. On paper, the two cars are pretty evenly matched. The Mercedes has more torque, but the BMW has more horsepower and a way better price. You could save about $47,000 by picking the BMW – money you could happily spend on upgrades instead of, you know… paying your bills.
If I were shopping for a luxury sports coupe, that would be my exact thought process. And I’m guessing the owner of this baby blue M2 is thinking the same. They chose some smart upgrades that turn this quiet, friendly M2 into the kind of girlfriend your mom definitely won’t approve of.
Over the next week couple of weeks we’ll be installing:
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CTS Cold Air Intake Kit
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Catless Downpipes
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Autotuner Unlock
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Custom SMS Stage 2 ECU Tune
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Custom SMS TCU Tune
These are solid first mods. They’ll wake the car up, give it a louder and meaner exhaust sound, and make the throttle feel snappier. With our custom SMS tunes, the power delivery should feel smoother and more direct. We Dial in all our SMS tunes on the dyno, and the owner gets before-and-after graphs to see the gains. Just like going to the gym each week, this M2 is about to start putting in reps – and it’s going to come out stronger.
