Peter Phung's Widebody M3: Wide and Wonderful

Search YouTube for Hans Stuck Jr. romping around the Nurburgring in his M3 GTR. The widebody, V8-swapped E46 in that famous clip was as gorgeous as it was quick. Peter Phung hadn’t actually seen that video until I mentioned it to him a few days ago, but several years back, he’d found another image of that car that encouraged him to try building his own version of what some see as the ultimate E46.

Immediately after picking up the car, complete with moonroof and a six-speed, he handed it off to someone else like a negligent father. He wanted to attach the DTM Fiberwerkz widebody kit sitting in the corner of his garage, and so he entrusted one shop he knew little about with the task.

It became a pretty significant job since black paint wasn’t exactly doing it for him—mainly because he’d already pictured the ultimate iteration of this car as one with a white base. This M3 was meant to be an homage to the original GTR, which is doused in white with the M-tricolor striping. He handed it off to the professionals and waited eagerly for a pretty car to come back to him.

Peter posing beside his sister Florenza with the car wearing a simpler livery.

Once back in his hands, he was mostly impressed. The paint looked great, but the bodywork was terrible; he noticed cracked fenders and excessive fiberglass reinforcement pretty soon after. Oh well—it was meant to be a track weapon, so he moved on and started addressing the shortcomings of the stock suspension. The first round of mods consisted of Turner swaybars, and TC Klein coilovers, Brembo big brakes, and a set of Bimmerworld brake ducts.

Besides the stripped cabin and the lightweight Recaro buckets, the diet consisted of a few things: aluminum door panels, two fixed Recaros, a DTM Fiberwerkz hood, an RKP carbon roof, a removed rear deck.

Interestingly, the extra tire and width came at a serious cost to any track-dedicated car. Though made from fiberglass, the bodykit added another 200 pounds to the tally. Even after gutting the interior and taking other weight saving measures, the car still weighs in at a slightly doughy 3,100 pounds.

TC Design installed a gorgeous half-cage and made the necessary subframe reinforcement problems, then Auto Logic replaced the rod bearings with WPC coated rod bearings and refreshed the VANOS with the Beisan kit. After that, Auto Logic cleaned the combustion chamber, performed a five-angle valve job and administered the Epic tune. If the car had been given to the wrong people initially, he made sure that everyone else who touched his dream M3 were top-tier.

The one persistent gremlin that plagued them, an overheating issue, was traced to the A/C condenser. Once they chucked that in the trash, the car ran cool in the scorching summer temperatures. Powerful, tractable, and reliable—the S54 with a little work is something special.

Along with a custom fitted Borla cat-back and long tube headers, the naturally aspirated package pumps out roughly 360 horsepower—more than enough power for a heftier E46 M3.

Peter’s thinking was that if the extra weight offset its above-average power output, the wider footprint would have to compensate. To make the most from this, he deicided that he needed a better suspension system, upgraded to a full 2 way adjustable MCS pro suspension, added a set of spacers, and fitted Titan 7 wheels measuring 18 x 10.5”. Peter then added camber plates, a stiffer front sway bar and rear traction arms from Ground Control. Even with the stock differential, the combination of massive tires and a soft rear makes the BMW sticky, predictable, and easy to lean on.

There’s a constant through this build, and that’s that his entrusting the car with enough gifted people to make up for the few bad apples who got their greasy mitts on it way back when. Once he had the gifted guys at 101 Paintworks fix the widebody, he was finally satisfied with this ambitious build. Finally, the showpiece part, the amazing widebody, the thing that distinguishes this from all the other E46s, was fitted like it was supposed to be.

“It handles well, but I’d say it looks better than it performed than it did during the first phase. I did want it to look good—so at least I accomplished that goal,” he said with a chuckle. After going though five years of changes, upgrading to better performance parts and more than doubling his original budget, the car performs as good as it looks.