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Taking the fabulous BMW 335i and trying to make it better than an M3 is a tempting but difficult exercise. Not only is the M3 a very good car, so is the 335i. If anyone has a chance to pull this off, it would be Dinan, the long-standing mega tuners of BMWs in the U.S.

Dinan has something of a unique position among American BMW tuners. That’s because its products are sold and installed by many BMW dealers (and tuning shops) across the country. Local sales and service is a big deal, especially if you don’t live in LA, Chicago, New York, or some such place where an experienced tuner resides. On top of that, Dinan products match the BMW factory warranty, so the whole issue of voiding the warranty and arguing with the dealer is moot. Buying a Dinan tuned car isn’t much different from buying an AMG Mercedes (or an M car).

To check out Dinan’s handiwork, we drove a Dinan S1 335i coupe. Dinan’s nomenclature is a little confusing, since the S1 package consists largely of Dinan Stage 2 software and Stage 2 suspension. The software and accompanying oil cooler raise the twin-turbo’s output by 84 horsepower to 384, and lift torque by 121 pound-feet to 421. That’s close to the M3’s 414 horsepower, but the Dinan completely crushes the M3’s paltry 295 pound-feet torque spec.

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Forget, for a moment, this M6's 628horsepower V10 engine, because that's more or less irrelevant here. On this road, even the standard 507 horsepower woulcLbe more than enough. because power is less important here than agility and grip.

There are 365 corners in less than seven miles on this narrow old road, which snakes
up Mt. Hamilton from San]ose. It was originally created so that horse-drawn carts
could bring the 36-inch telescope to the Lick Observatory back in 1876, and it doesn't seem to have gotten much wider since. Since the M6 we're driving and the MS up ahead fill the width of the road in some spots, we're lucky we don't meet any oncoming traffic on the way 10 the summit.

As much as the absence of traffic anywhere in California tends to surprise us, we're even more astonished to find these stately M cars climbing to the top with such alacrity. For that we can thank the people at Dinan Engineering.. who've turned these luxury limos into the serious sports cars most enthusiasts expected from the start.