I’ll start this by saying I sold a manual e92 m3 which I’d only kept for 6 months and bought a manual e46 m3 which I’ve had for three and a half years and have no plans to sell.

I mainly use both for commuting from the burbs into the city centre and early morning runs to the airport. Fuel economy in the e92 was about 16mpg - 18mpg whereas the e46 is 19mpg-21mpg. Given the low mileage I do the absolute wasn’t much different but it felt like I was always in the petrol station in the e92.

I sold the e92 for 2 reasons. Mine was 5 years old and had a cosseted life but lots of stuff kept going on it: Abs unit, interior switch gear, creaky seats which irritated me. It was all covered by the extended warranty but I got sick of going to Murphy & Gunn with it. The second reason was I don’t think it suited rush hour city centre traffic. On the motorway it was a monster, the natural cruising speed for the car was 180 Kmh but around town in stop start traffic there was an initial inertia to over come from a standing start if you couldn’t plant the accelerator and rev it. This became very frustrating and ultimately was why I sold it. I did wish I had tried a DCT version but never got the chance.

By contrast the e46 feels nippy and responsive. It is slower the the e92, on a motorway it’s happiest about 150kmh if you’ll let it go there. Around town it’s light enough to be responsive and can squeeze through gaps that appear in traffic. Writing this now makes me want to take it out of storage and tax it for a few months.

Just my 2p as in reality both are great.