Why The BMW M3 GTR Was The Face Of Need For Speed Most Wanted

We speak with Need For Speed’s Art Director to talk about the legacy of Most Wanted’s M3 GTR, and why it was chosen in the first place

NFS Most Wanted cover art

Take yourself back to the year 2005 for a moment, sometime around October. You’ve just popped into your local Gamestation/Gamestop/your country’s preferred choice of physical game retailer – because you know, those were a thing back then.

You walk up to the stand of games in front of you, and one catches your eye. It’s not the grittiness of the cover that catches your eye or even the graffiti-style ‘Most Wanted’ logo. No, it’s the silver and blue work of art on the front – a certain BMW M3 GTR.

You get home and put the disc into your console. Moments later you’re driving it – that demonic-looking race car, in all its blue and silver glory. That synthesised V8 noise rings through you, but nothing cuts quite like that tinge of transmission whine.

Credit: LeMansRacer/NFS Wiki

Then, you come up against some guy called Razor – the top Blacklist driver in Rockport. He challenges you to race for pink slips, and you think you’ve got your hands on a new Mustang to boot.

Only, no. We know how that all ends – Razor turns out to have sabotaged your M3, and in turn, takes it from you. In those brief few moments though, the M3 GTR has etched itself as an icon in your mind.

That was the whole reason it was selected to be the star car. “The player character in Most Wanted is from out of town,” Carl Jarrett, Need For Speed’s current Art Director told us, “so we wanted hero art that was a statement piece. What better way to evade capture than in a full-blown street-legal race car?.”

The M3 GTR was a contrast from the plethora of JDM tuner cars dominating the modified car scene in that era, which Most Wanted’s predecessors – Underground and its sequel – leant so heavily into.

Jarret added: “The decision to use the M3 GTR for the Most Wanted cover came from working closely with Habib Zargapour, the project’s primary Art Director. We definitely wanted something that stood out from what we were seeing in car magazines and at the usual car shows.

“Given that Most Wanted came out the year after NFS Underground 2, we needed something vastly different from the JDM style that was very popular at the time.”

The NFS M3 GTR is now a literal museum piece

It was that desire to be different to led to the somewhat subtle yet now-legendary livery adorning the M3 GTR. Jarret said: “The iconic livery was designed by Gabriel Frizzera and Andy Blackmore. Similar to our goals with choosing the M3 GTR, we wanted something striking against the trends of the era. The flashy tuner-style graphics and bright colours commonly seen at the trade shows weren’t suitable, and we needed something that truly embodied the adrenaline-fueled essence of racing. The brief was to keep it clean, classic, and absent of the sponsor logos and other elements a racing livery would typically have.”

But did Jarret know it would become such an icon at the time? So much so as to become a literal museum piece? “Definitely not.”

He added: “We knew the game had something special going for it, as it was also an Xbox 360 launch title. The rendering team had done some fantastic work, and bringing back the chaos of police chases and a story dynamic that many had never experienced in a racing game before was always going to be special.”

BMW M3 GTR – rear

That legacy isn’t underappreciated by Jarret, though: “The fact that the M3 GTR is so iconic to the Need for Speed franchise to this day puts a big smile on my face.”

“Ultimately, there wouldn’t be anything that I would change, and I’d simply love to see a remake of the M3 GTR in a modern racing game.

“To be able to capture the magic of that engine noise, the transmission whine, and all of the details that today’s technology is able to showcase, would certainly be a fun experience.”

Now feels like a good time for us to prod EA with the NFS Most Wanted Remaster stick so that remake becomes a reality. Come on, we’re ready for Razor this time.

Ryan is Car Throttle’s News and Features Editor, landing here in 2023. When he’s not writing cars, you’ll find Ryan pretending to drive them on Gran Turismo or playing with radio-controlled ones.

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