The time has come to see Car Throttle’s current project car, a BMW 330d Touring of the E46 variety, lose some weight in an attempt to become faster on the track. So far, the car received some important upgrades already, over a series of episodes meant to show us exactly how much of a difference various mods make on our cars. We’re talking about difference in lap times, of course, as this was the goal of the experiment from the get go.
If you’re looking at these episodes to see how the car’s behavior changes for daily usage duties, you might be disappointed as all the mods done to the E46 330d here are meant to make it less comfortable but faster on the track. The biggest change in that regard comes in today’s episode, the seventh of the series. This time the guys are simply stripping the car of all the things that don’t really help out when you want to get the fastest lap time out of it.
Therefore, the seats were all taken out, the sound deadening along with them, climate control unit and so on. Even the steering wheel and gear knob have been replaced by lighter alternatives. There’s now only one seat left inside the car and it’s a lightweight, bucket seat too, with a complete harness to keep the driver safe. All in all, the guys shaved some 150 kilos (330 lbs) from the car’s hefty hips and that is bound to show some sort of difference, right?
After all we do hear BMW brag about the weight they save on their CS, GTS or CSL models all the time, and there has to be something in there to justify all this bragging, right? Well, the guys did shave some time off their laps, namely a maximum of 0.26 seconds compared to the last attempt, when they added more power to the car. Overall, the car saved 2.61 seconds off the initial runs for a best lap time of 37.5 seconds. The biggest difference came from adding proper wheels and tires to the mix, 1.4 seconds being saved in the process. They are getting pretty close to the lap time set by the E92 M3 too, the time to beat being 37.07. Will they make it? The hybrid turbo they plan on installing might just do the trick.
