A year after Steve Dinan left, his company gets most things right with the S3 package
Last year, Steve Dinan sold the company that bears his name, and which he had spent 36 years building, to a private equity group. He is still a consultant, and most of the same crew remains at the shop, which means Dinan — the company — is still modifying BMWs just like it always has. The question is, are they modifying them as well as they did when Steve owned everything? We got a Dinan S3 M235i to find out.
The BMW 235i is one of the most agile and responsive sports coupes on the market even before Dinan gets it. Maybe it’s the most agile and responsive. The BMW M2 that arrives this spring promises to be even more fun than that.
But Dinan is never satisfied with simply equaling the best. So in the bells-and-whistles S3 Signature Package that was on our M235i, Dinan made changes all the way from the air intake in front to the badge on the rear deck lid, the latter which says, as you might guess, “DINAN.” To make the S3, Dinan tunes the 235i’s 3.0-liter six, tweaks the suspension front and rear and slathers cosmetic touches throughout. It sounds like it’d be a showstopper but, apart from the wheels, a modest lowering and the enormous “DINAN” text across the top of our test car’s windshield, you can hardly tell by looking at it. You can tell by driving it, though.
It’s only lowered by about a half inch, but the M235i looks lower.
What’s It Like To Drive?
On the road, you notice the extra power right off. You really can’t argue with extra power, and this is added all up and down the tach but not in such egregious amounts that it overpowers the suspension or braking. It’s not all piled up at the top of the rev range, either — it’s balanced. Despite being considerably more than stock, the power in the Dinan M235i feels just right. The stock 235i gets 320 hp, the coming M2 is said to peak at 365, and our Dinan is listed at 440, with peak torque amounting to 455 lb-ft. Those mods and the resulting performance boost are legal in all 50 states, by the way, Dinan says. To get those numbers Dinan adds its larger-than-stock N55 Turbo Kit with dual Intercoolers, Dinantronics Performance Tuner Stage 4, carbon fiber cold air intake and Free Flow Exhaust. It’s feels like the perfect match for this car.
The S3 suspension is not too harsh for everyday road wallops. This could easily be a daily driver, for instance. But it takes you through corners way faster than you might have thought possible. Entering our first 270-degree freeway onramp, the car just held and held to the pavement, with barely perceptible body roll. We could have gone much faster. There was great grip from the Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires, which measured 235/35ZR-19 front and 265/30ZR-19 rear, mounted on 19×8 and 19×9 black BBS CHRs with Dinan center caps. On a couple subsequent on-camber onramps, we pushed harder and the M235i kept holding the harder we pushed it. We couldn’t make it slip. Very impressive here.
Then we went up in the twisting hills of Malibu on some of our favorite roads — you know the ones. Tight second-gear corners all over the place allowed us to get more of an autocrosser’s feel for the setup. We noticed a couple things: the electronic locking rear differential came on after a slight delay with something of a sudden almost-clunk. Dinan said this was the traction control system kicking in and if you don’t hold down the DSC button until it was well and truly all the way off, you’ll get that. That only came into play exiting really tight corners, though.
Dinan leaves the BMW factory electronic shocks in place, putting in its own springs and progressive bump stops. The springs lower the car by ½ inch in front and 5/8 inch in rear. Dinan says the spring rate is stiffened “just slightly” to match the electronic shocks at the lowered ride height — 10 percent stiffer than the factory springs. Paired with Dinan’s bumps stops, “the car still has the ability to use all of its travel,” Dinan says. But compared to the billiard-table-smooth onramps where we started our drive, and where this setup was beyond fast, on the bumpy roads of the ‘Bu, the suspension tended to bounce after the bumps, like it might need more jounce control in the shocks to match the shorter, stiffer springs. If we were building a suspension, that’s what we’d try to do, anyway. It felt like an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise well-sorted setup.
An N55 Big Turbo Kit – with a little help from the carbon fiber cold air intake – boosts power to 440.
Do I Want It?
The BMW M2 doesn’t arrive until spring; when it does, we’d love to try both that and the Dinan S3 on the same day on the same road. The Dinan could very well be the better of the two. The stock, base 235i, meanwhile, is a certified blast, but this one may be even more fun, except for that bouncy part. If you can live with a little bounce in your step, you’ll be rewarded on smooth roads with superb grip, and on straight lines with strong acceleration. Minus the turbo, the wheels tires and brakes that we had, all of which you will want to add, the package we drove here lists at $ 8,736. Add the cost of the turbo, wheels and tires (for which pricing is yet to be determined) and you could have a very reasonable package price for a system that comes with a 4-year/50,000-mile warranty.
There are 200 certified Dinan BMW dealers in North America, so go down and talk to one of them.
