Home for the Holidays: Our Techno E36 M3 is Back

It’s the holiday season and with that comes a natural sense to reflect upon the year’s past. 2019 was an incredible first full year for Future Classic—we took a huge step beyond our lifestyle roots to start engineering and manufacturing our own components for BMW and Porsche.

As Future Classic continued to grow, I wanted to pay tribute to the car that really started it all—my E36 M3. As a formidable sidekick to my E90 M3 at the time, I took it as an opportunity to build the car my childhood self always wanted. Truth be told, the car wasn’t nearly as clean as the previous owner advertised. What seemed like every second of my free time went into poking and prodding this car to satisfy my curiosity and craving to learn about this platform, and with it, came a generous helping of maintenance and mods.

With the car turning 20 years old last year, I wanted some items I’d left unaddressed remedied. I took it to a shop where I thought it’d be in good hands, but it ended up getting neglected for the better part of eight months. While it baked in the brutal Chicago summer heat, the glovebox delaminated, the bumper trims faded to grey, and the paint almost looked matte.

Rather than let the car rot over winter, I decided to pick the car up and address everything myself. But seeing the car in the daylight after all that time way almost made me want to give up. I had done just that thirteen years ago when another shop failed to perform any work on my E34 M5, but I was determined to not let oversights like that affect my end goal again.

I left the car in the capable hands of Luminecent Detailing while I compiled a new parts list for this latest round of refresh. While I definitely expected improvement, I wasn’t prepared for just how restorative their exterior detail would be. I finally took the time to swap out some archaic H&R front spacers to our own and, thanks to Rogue Engineering, fitted their gorgeous race brace in place of an old Eibach bar. The result was more than enough to restore my vigor to make this car my ultimate E36. It made me proud to own it.

But more than that, my elatedness was a reminder of everyone who I could call part of this Future Classic family. As small as the car community is in the grand scheme of things, our FC family feels big. It feels close. And I am forever grateful to have such incredible people be a part of something like this—to not only know the good and bad of a build, but a community of enthusiasts who care about their machinery like it’s an extension of themselves.

So to all of our FC family around the world, thank you. And Happy Holidays from us at Future Classic.