Airline pilot Alex McCulloch is a great judge of what it means to travel quickly and effortlessly through the air, and so his choice of a BMW M Coupe is telling. Petrolicious sat down with McCulloch to talk about his beautiful BMW Z3 M Coupe.

The rare BMW fits in nicely with one of his other obscure pursuits: cross-country, long-distance hang gliding, a sport that allows him to “be in a movie.”

Although McCulloch has subjected his 325-hp sport coupe to some modifications, but at the same time, he imposed an interesting limit: Within 48 hours, his BMW Z3 M Coupe should be able to return to stock form.

bmw-z3-m-coupe

Just a hair over 10,000 units were produced worldwide. So you’d be hard pressed see another on the road, and that exclusivity makes it cool. The Z3 M Coupe is incredibly fun car to drive. It has the same 3.2 liter I6 engine as in the E36 M3. The North American version is a bit slower, as is the same with the M3, but it’s still faster than a modern day VW GTI or Subaru BRZ. It also had a 5-Speed manual and was rear-wheel drive and built on the same fun-to-drive chassis as the standard Z3. So it’s properly fun.

Here is the video: