For the entire first half of the previous decade, the BMW Z4 GT3 was one of the Bavarian automaker’s most successful racecars, having won the 24 Hours of Spa and a number of other prestigious races. The fans kept dreaming about a road-legal version, but it never came to be. Rewind to present day, and someone built such a car… with a Mercedes-Benz V12 under the hood.
The author of the build frankly states in the video here that his goal was to ‘piss off’ both BMW and Mercedes fans by doing ‘something crazy’. That’s why he vacated the engine bay of the Z4 GT3 of its usual V8 and put the competing company’s V12 in its place. Interestingly enough, the new engine slotted in just fine and didn’t require any major modifications of the bay. A few pipes had to be moved around, but that’s about it. The most challenging part was fabricating the exhaust manifolds from scratch – as you can guess, the original racecar didn’t have, or need, a very sophisticated exhaust system.
We were unable to find horsepower or torque mentioned, but we would imagine the V12 mill to be a nice upgrade over the original’s 522 PS (515 hp / 384 kW). The project is now considered complete, but the car remains to be thoroughly tested.
And as for the interior, it looks much like that of any racecar – a couple of bucket seats, a quick-release steering wheel, a roll cage and very little besides. However, since the build is street-legal, it does have some creature comforts like power steering, proper dashboard trim and air conditioning.
