It had to be orange. Of all the colours this BMW M3 Coupe could have been, orange feels the most correct. This is because BMW has announced production of the ‘E92’ M3 Coupe is over, and that car in picture number 1 above is the very, last, one.



A moment of silence then, for the end of a modern performance hero. It’s the car, don’t forget, that prompted Jeremy to don his finest Bluetooth earpiece and announce that the V8 M3 Coupe was in fact, “a masterpiece”.



And what a V8. A lot of adenoids burst when BMW first launched the new M3 in 2007, because gone was the old 3.2-litre straight-six - a shrieking masterstroke of combustion - and in came a 4.0-litre V8. A V8? In an M3? Yes. And it worked rather well.



It produced 420bhp and 295lb ft of torque, could hit 0-62mph in 4.8 seconds (4.6 with the double-clutch auto ‘box) and was good for a limited top speed of 155mph. It also won the 3.0-litre to 4.0-litre class of the International Engine of the Year Awards five times in a row, and when provoked, made a sound good enough to make parts of your anatomy fizz.



It wasn’t perfect - that 1,655kg kerbweight meant the M3 had officially become a podgy old thing - but it handled like a hooligan, and that gets a big TG Thumbs Up.



A few special edition coupes appeared during its six-year run: the bombastic 4.4-litre, 450bhp GTS (also quite orange), with its track-orientation and monster rear wing; the M3 DTM Champion Edition, with a limited run of 54 models (one for each of BMW’s DTM race victories) and the lovely BMW M3 GT2 Art Car created by Jeff Koons.



Sad to see it go? Over 40,000 Coupes were built, but it’s the last of the line for the ‘M3’ badge on the two-door, because the next one will be called the ‘M4’, after the new 4-Series Coupe. Which means the long history the E30, E36 and E46 generation coupes have built is now at an end.

Have a click through the gallery and tell us which was your favourite version of the M3 Coupe (and you can’t all say ‘E30’). Then, let us know what you’d like to see from the next M4. Super lightweight body, buzzy, turbocharged 2.0-litre four-pot with rear-wheel-drive and no power assistance… wishful thinking?