MW Design BMW M3: Darth Maul  

By Jay Williams - 20/May/2009

Vancouver, Canada – BMW's M3 is a highly desirable car that has the perfect mix of sports performance and elegant luxury.

Canadian car turner company MW Deign from Vancouver have got their hands a BMW M3 Coupe (E92) and have stared a new project naming it after the baddest of bad guys: Darth Maul (Star Wars).

Either the head engineer of this project is a massive Star Wars fan or perhaps it is to signify the overall sinister body styling of the tuned BMW M3 Coupe.

The colour scheme doesn't really evoke thoughts of the Darth Maul if you ask me. 

Where Darth Maul was famously red and black, the colour scheme of the BMW M3 is mainly Jerez Black but with little details of orange on the front bumper's air vents and the caps on the wheels. But they do add a nice level of detail.

Looking the front of this tuned BMW M3, the front bar reminds me of the olden VE GTS front, with it's extended Amuse Ericsson front bumper that comes with custom orange highlights.

The rear of the car gains a new Amuse Ericsson trunk that has a spoiler lip moulded into the trunk lid and a new carbon fibre rear diffuser that also has custom orange highlights.

Rounding out the body styling are carbon fibre side mirrors and carbon fibre side vents with the same custom orange highlight that are current throughout the car.

The BMW M3 "Darth Maul" sits on H&R sports springs and 20-inch Modulare M6 rims that have orange-accented centre caps and are wrapped in 245/30/20 front and 285/25/20 rubber at the rear, which is a stark comparison to the factory standard 18-inch alloy wheels.

No details have been released about the interior modifications, but our sources tell us that the "Darth Maul" comes in a Fox Red interior trim.

Project "Darth Maul" is still in stage one of it's tuning phase so it is unclear what MW Design have in store for us in terms of engine modifications.

We would like to see a huge super charger or a bi-turbo application, but in reality a tuned ECU, exhaust system, new airbox and possibly cylinder heads are more likely than a forced induction rework.

Rivals for this tuner car are many and varied. Hamann who are based in Laupheim, Germany, offer four different body kits for the BMW M3 Coupe (E92), three exhaust kits and their own ECU tuning. 

Mind you Hamann has been one of the world's most famous tuners since 1986.

But overall MW Design's "Darth Maul" is a refreshing take on a German classic, giving the car even more street cred and improved appeal to the young up-and-coming enthusiasts.

At it's core, the factory standard BMW M3 Coupe is a highly tuned car straight off the show room. It has excellent power all the way to the redline - the BMW M3 has a high-rev V8 engine with genuine race-car character. Every component has been carefully optimised to maximise output and engine speed according to BMW.

The current car was launched in 2007 with a 4.0-litre V8 engine replacing the old 3.2-litre straight six. Despite the 800cc gain the new engine is 15kg lighter.

The front-mounted 4.0-litre V8 engine outputs 309kW of power @ 8300rpm and 400Nm of torque @ 3900rpm and can accelerate from zero to 100km/h in just 4.7 seconds when coupled to the all-new twin-clutch semi automatic sports transmission.

While it develops huge amounts of power and has a lofty 250km/h top speed, the BMW M3 still manages to be relatively efficient,consuming an average of 11.9-litres of fuel per 100km.

This is damn sexy stuff. And the car isn't bad either.

The Company: The MW in MWDesign stands for MeisterWerke which is German for MasterPiece. It's this level of detail and workmanship you can expect from every vehicle they produce. 

Whether it is a set of precision forged multi-piece wheels made to measure, integrated fluid aerodynamics or a completely built-from-scratch project, MW Design can do it.

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- BMW M3 Coupe (2008)
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- BMW 1 Series Coupe (2007)
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- BMW Concept CS (Concept)
- BMW 6 Series Update (2007)
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- BMW 3 Series Convertible (2007)
- BMW Concept CS (Concept)