BMW
The BMW Z3 is one of 299 BMW models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1995. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the BMW Z3 properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1990s were the decade of refinement — airbags and ABS became universal, Japanese build quality set the world standard, and the modern SUV segment was effectively invented. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Toyota Toyota Tacoma, the Honda Honda CR-V, the Toyota Toyota RAV4 — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the BMW Z3 reads like this: the record lists its engine as Gasoline: / 1.8–1.9 L BMW M43#M43B18 / M43/BMW M44 / M44 inline-four engine / I4 / 2.0–3.0 L BMW M52 / M52/BMW M54 / M54 straight-six engine / I6 / 3.2 L BMW M50#S50; kerb weight is recorded at 1160-1400 kg; drive goes through 5-speed Magna PT#Longitudinal orientation / GETRAG 250/ZF S5-31 transmission / ZF S5-31 manual transmission / manual / 4-speed GM 4L30-E transmission / GM Hydra-matic 4L30E automat; the layout is Front-engine, rear-wheel drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within BMW's own catalogue the BMW Z3 sits alongside the BMW 116, the BMW 269, the BMW 3 Series, the BMW 3 Series. The record names the BMW Z1 as its predecessor and the BMW Z4 (E85) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Joji Nagashima / Burkhard Göschel. Assembly is recorded at United States: Greer, South Carolina (Plant Spartanburg).
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the BMW Z3 costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.