BMW M3 owner receives F1 race clutch by accident

Sometimes a company will send you the wrong item for your online order, and usually it’s a bit of a hassle to fix.

But in this case, the recipient of the incorrect item turned out to be quite lucky indeed, if not just for the story and interest it generated after being picked up by motorauthority.com.

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Under the title, “Ordered new Sachs clutch kit from Amazon, this is what I got,” m3forum user ‘breadvan’ posted a few images to try and work out what had gone wrong.

“My clutch has been slipping progressively as of late and my buddy said it needs to be changed ASAP,” they wrote in the thread.

“Yesterday, I purchased a replacement OEM Sachs clutch kit off of Amazon. I received it today and this is what I got.

“It looks nothing like the stock photo on Amazon so I'm thinking I received the wrong part?”

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It turns out that, yes, they had indeed been sent the wrong part. While an M3 clutch looks… well, pretty much like a standard passenger car’s clutch, this one was smaller and far more complicated.

In fact, it looks suspiciously like the clutch from a Formula 1 race car.

Just to be sure they hadn’t been mistaken regarding what to expect from a BMW E46 M3 clutch, they asked:

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“Does anyone have a picture of what the OEM clutch is supposed to look like?”

MOTOR has tried contacting ZF for a price estimate on this part to no avail, but speculators have guessed anywhere between USD$7000 to USD$30,000.

Considering F1 gearboxes can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, we’d say ‘Breadvan’ has come out on top with this clerical error.