The E36 will always have a soft spot in my heart. As my first car, one that I kept for 10 years and that reached 248,000 miles, the E36 will always make me happy. But to see one with an S62 V-8 from an E39 M5 makes my brain fizz with so much excitement that my eyes start twitching. Which is why I’m incredibly jealous of Sreten, host of the M539 Restorations YouTube channel, as he got to actually drive one.
If you aren’t familiar, Sreten is from Germany but he recently traveled to the States to buy a very special Santorini Blue BMW 850csi. He bought it from BimmerWorld in Virginia and while he was there, he took a tour of the facility. That tour included some very special stuff, like a manual E63 M6. There are plenty of exciting goodies to be seen at BimmerWorld HQ, and it’s worth watching the entire hour-long video to check it out. But the best is the S62-swapped E36 Touring, which is owned by the owner and founder of BimmerWorld, James Clay.
This E36 Touring has a pretty fascinating story, as it started out as a bunch of scraps. Before E36 Tourings were eligible for import into the U.S., the owner of BimmerWorld had a friend in Sweden ship him the car in parts, and he built the car here in the States. Its stunning Montreal Blue Metallic is also the factory paint, which makes it even more special. Originally, it had a turbocharged 3.2-liter inline-six from a U.S.-market E36 M3, but that proved to be too complicated and unreliable, so that was ditched for an S62 V-8 with only 15,000 miles on it. Looking under the hood, the V8 looks massive and takes up the entire engine bay, but the swap was so well done that it looks like it came that way from the factory.
With a big V8 up front, this E36 is more like a muscle wagon than anything else. Hearing a V8 rumble seems so delightfully out of place while looking at the gauges, steering wheel, and interior of a tiny ’90s 3 Series. It being a wagon makes it so much better. If Clay’s impressive racing history wasn’t enough to prove how much of a true BMW fan he is, this car does it.
