Dinan is a brilliant business man. He's taken what was a hobby when he was young, and turned it into the stateside equivalent of Alpina/Hartge which is respected and supported by BMW dealers across the country - I think qualifies as an impressive business accomplishment.
Now, I've actually only seen two Dinan cars. Both were turbo cars, and both pretty impressive in their own right.
The first,
http://www.robertlevinson.com/M5_Turbo/ was owned by Rob Levinson of UCC (Underground Upgrade Club) Motorwerks before there was an UCC Motorworks.
Rob had invited a group of us from the BMW forum to get together in Tarrytown NY. Brett Anderson (
www.koalamotorsport.com) was installing an M3 engine into Ben Liaw's e46 318 and (I think) the idea was germinating in Rob’s head about him and Ben starting UUC Motorwerks, Their first product basically being the BMW short shift kit.
The other Dinan car I was able to see was in Indiana on the outskirts of Indianapolis in the showroom of a defunct car dealership. It was an ‘85 Bronzite M635CSi that was lowered and had M5 turbine wheels on it.
I found someone at the dealership and asked is “that old M6 was for sale” well, that “old M6” turned out to be a full boat Dinan turbo car; Much different than Rob Levinson’s car but similar in the quality of workmanship – very nice. Rob’s car just seemed (to look at) like a stock ’88 M5 with the exception of the Porsche turbo air cleaner, red hoses, and air cooler for the turbo mounted in place of the original M5’s air filter box.
The Dinan M6, I was told, was a 3.9 liter built for a basketball player. It had a custom (Dinan built) 3” exhaust with a single inlet/outlet stainless steel muffler. There was no sign of an air filter or even the usual pipes you see sticking up into the engine compartment for the turbo, it was all very discreet.
On the passenger side, in place of the M6 Air Flow Meter, was a mass air flow sensor (from an 840 I was told) which was being blown through from the pressure side. The air cooler fed by the turbo was plumbed to the mass air flow sensor directly before the intake plenum.
The car was already sold when I got to it so perhaps it will turn up again?
As far as Dinan’s engineering goes, it is what it is… It isn’t rocket science but then again, it doesn’t have to be… He’s not improving the performance of a Ferrari Enzo
http://www.rsportscars.com/eng/cars/ferrari_enzo.asp, he’s improving the performance of mass produced family cars…
BMW built the E28 for the masses. Even the M5 E28 was mass produced (I know, I know “hand built”). Improving one aspect of a mass produced family car at the expense of other aspects just isn’t that difficult.
Dinan takes BMW parts and has them made over with minor changes.
When everything is said and done, The Dinan stage 1 “suspension” for the E28 is a set of rewound springs, some revalved production shocks and some adjustable swaybars; nothing more...
What makes Steve Dinan successful isn’t his ability to engineer, but his ability to market…
Steve Dinan's e28
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