You may have noticed a few days ago that BMW M slapped a roof box on an M3 Touring 24H race car and drove it through the streets of Belgium, before its race at the 24 Hours of Spa. While BMW didn’t actually race with the box on the roof, as that seems like an aerodynamic nightmare, it did show off just how cool it looks to mount one to an M3 Touring. Okay, so your standard long-roof M3 won’t look anywhere near as cool as the lower, wider racer. Still, this is a pretty damn good advertisement for BMW’s M Performance Parts catalog.
The BMW M Motorsport Instagram account posted about the box-equipped M3 racer three times. The first time, the photo’s test said “Yep, we put a roof box on it,” and then had a big arrow pointing to it, with the post caption “How insane is that?” Then, BMW M mounted a camera to the roof box and showed the car driving through Belgian streets from the box’s view. Lastly, BMW hinted at the passenger seat that was spotted through the window, as the race car typically doesn’t have one. But BMW gave a raffle-winning passenger a ride through the Spa parade.
“We used the event to combine series accessories from BMW with motorsport technology and to demonstrate its performance. The latest generation of BMW roof boxes is currently in the final development and validation phase, so a test with the BMW M3 Touring 24H was more than obvious,” BMW told Motorsport.
“The BMW aero roof box received a special design adapted to the Touring for this purpose. In the new generation, the focus in development was on aerodynamic efficiency and low noise development.”
I’d say this was more of a fun marketing tool, to get M3 Touring customers interested in the roof box by showing off how cool it looked on the race car. And, honestly, job done. It looked cool as hell. It was practical for the event, though. “For the fans in Spa, we were also able to transport a number of great giveaways with it.” So if you thought your M3 Touring was already practical, just wait for the roof box.