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Despite our enthusiasm, sky-high commitment and perseverance, we have to throw in the towel and the BMW E30 M3 story is put to an end. The ratio between fun and cost is totally derailed and common sense has ensured that we pulled the plug.

Of course, the end of the M3 story doesn’t mean we’ll stop rallying. On the contrary, we are more motivated than ever and start again with a clean slate, a brand new car and tons of enthusiasm!

From the first second it was certain that it was going to be a rear-wheel drive car again. However, the availability of these is getting smaller and smaller. We briefly considered staying in the BMW family, in the form of an E36, E46 or 1 Series with a rock-solid S54 engine. But looking to the future, we were no longer convinced of this.

We took a completely different approach and went shopping at Toyota Gazoo Racing in Cologne, where we put one of the last remaining Toyota GT86 CS-R3s in our shopping cart.

It is not immediately the fastest R3, but it is a real factory car with a high fun content and rear-wheel drive! In addition, it does not look particularly bad and the flat-4 sound makes it a bit typical. We fell in love instantly.

In any case, R-Box is ready for a new adventure from 2023!

See you then!

Unfortunately, it has become 2 bridges instead of 3!

The Trois-Ponts rally was the first on the R-Box rally calendar 2022 and was mainly intended to get race kilometers in the legs and to evaluate the winter updates.

A lot of hard work has been done on the car in the winter months, and as usual this again results in numerous updates. Obviously, the pain point from the past, the entire charging system, has been completely reviewed and renewed. Because we love challenges, we have also completely mixed up our note system.

Add to that the refreshing -7°C at the start of the first test, and all the necessary ingredients were present to have no idea how the first kilometers were going to go.

Despite all the efforts, all the preparations and especially the fantastic R-Box team (and of course I’m not talking about the crew) it didn’t go as we had planned. The energy crisis is not only manifesting itself in society but is also plaguing the R-Box team.

After the electrical perils of the TAC rally, this time we were more determined than ever to make it to the end of the rally. The BMW got a thorough check-up supplemented with a few updates that had been planned for some time.

(Photos Wim Becker, Juha Bos)