A twin turbo E92 M3 that was beyond expensive. I owned a pretty much stock one not too long after and while that thing screamed it had no business playing with superbikes like this guy did.

I was on my R1 on one of my many east coast trips to see family while I was in the navy. Bike was gutted and tuned for 1/8 mile drag racing. Only one headlight and tail lights. No signals, no mirrors, straight through exhaust, bored over to 1034cc, ECU tuned for 93 octane at 170.1whp. Had a power commander when I raced with U4 (130 octane) race gas pushing in the 200s for whp. Swapped out sprockets so it could put the power down and not just wheelie everywhere. Front end was strapped down when I launched at the track. Clutch sand-blasted for maximum grip, 369 lbs with a gallon of gas in it without me (like 160lbs at the time). I literally hack sawed everything I could to make it fast and light as fuck since I was 20 and clearly ready to take on the world.

I’m cruising back through SC, this M3 rolls up next to me. I usually just roll the throttle in 6th (top gear) and 99% of cars disappeared. This guy didn’t. I’m just rolling the throttle until about 90 and he’s beside me and pulling strong. I downshift a couple times and take off, hit about 140 and figured “well he’s done now” and lo and behold when I looked over this fucker was just barely behind me. At that point I had to give it all the beans and got it up to about 180 before I turned back and noticed I finally had a decent gap so I let off. I hopped behind him and took the next exit to the gas station (since I was pretty much out anyways lol) and he went over with me. I was scared as a dumbass kid thinking I’m about to get robbed but it was some older guy that was just excited as fuck to race a bike that was willing to put the power down and give it all the beans. We chatted at the gas station for a while and he showed me under the hood. This guy had MONEY MONEY in that car. Everything was like a chrome professional race shop look. He had no idea what sort of numbers it made (I still think he knew) but he said “I don’t know, 800? A thousand? I just told them I wanted the fastest M3 they could build.” And sir you did. As a kid that was used to obliterating R35s and Lambos with a tricked out R1 with barely any right hand twisting your fucking BMW was a genuine threat. I have no doubt you walked 600ccs all day long. And you had air conditioning. And a backrest. And a radio. I was just deaf to my loud ass bike barely able to see in the darkness.

I bought an E92 M3 a couple years later. I loved that car but man it had no shot against any 600cc+ bike. That guy had to get it modified to hell and back to put down the numbers he did. It had to be $50k+ in mods alone to support that platform especially considering how new it was at the time. I didn’t have that money and got mine repoed after a few years like the dumbass I was. I still have the bike though, and all the running from police and races like these as stories to go along with it. She sits parked nice and pretty in my garage next to our minivan. Every now and again I’ll take our middle daughter out on it and it’s just terrifying. Nobody needs that level of power. It does 115mph in first gear. Like you can just shift it into gear once and end up in prison if you hit it hard. It’ll just throw the front wheel up at 140mph in 3rd gear if you hit the throttle too hard. My daughter (13) loves being the coolest thing on the road with the custom white R1 super bike rolling down the road. But it genuinely scares me nowadays knowing I have family to come home to and it’s essentially a widow maker. I ride less than 100 miles a year now.