How do you make one of the most iconic cars ever even more legendary? Placing it front and center on an iconic video game’s box art is one way. We’re talking about none other than the BMW E46 M3 featured in iconic Need For Speed: Most Wanted. This time, we spotted it at BMW M Festival 2025, in Chengdu, almost exactly one year after BMW pulled the covers off the special car at the BMW Welt. To mark thirty years since the original game’s debut, BMW grabbed an M3 GTR from the vault and spruced it up in a livery straight from NFS: Most Wanted’s cover car.
NFS Most Wanted E46: The Iconic Hero Car Come to Life
By 2005, the E46 M3 had likely already become a dream car to plenty of young (and old) enthusiasts. But the car trickled into pop culture with the release of Need for Speed: Most Wanted. It quickly earned a spot as one of the most legendary cars in gaming. In the game’s opening moments, the M3 GTR serves as the hero’s pride and joy — a dominant machine that rules the streets until a fateful act of sabotage hands it over to the rival racer, Razor. From there, the player’s mission becomes personal: climb the Blacklist, reclaim the stolen car, and once again unleash the M3 GTR’s unrivaled power on the asphalt. Nearly 20 years later, BMW celebrated the Need for Speed series by wrapping one of their own M3 GTRs to match the car from the cover of the video game.
Arguably, even a standard E46 M3, or extra crispy M3 CSL might have sufficed. But instead, we got treated to the M3 GTR. In 2005, it would’ve been a completely unknown entity unless you were already intimately familiar with the brand or ALMS Racing (American Le Mans). The E46 M3 GTR relied upon a fierce P60B40 engine, a V8 destined only for race applications. Well, with some small exception. BMW produced ten M3 GTR Strassenversion (literally “street version”) in order to homologate the racing M3 GTR for the series. After rules changed in 2002, raising minimum requirements to 100 cars and 1,000 engines, the M3 GTR was to be no more.
Of course, that didn’t stop thousands (millions?) of people from enjoying the ferocious V8-powered M3 from the comfort of their living rooms in games like NFS. Take in the pictures in the gallery below, taking care to note some of the insane details that make the E46 M3 GTR such a spectacle. Turns out, a wild wrap is the last thing you notice when competing with side exit exhaust and an out-of-this-world aero kit.