A BMW wagon – you read correctly, a wagon – driven by Tommy Stockdale is the Optima Ultimate Street Car Australia for 2025, presented by R&J Batteries. And Tommy was also claimed the NGK Modern class along the way. We caught up with the newly-crowned winner fresh from victory, with the tyres still smoking and the BMW driver on Cloud Nine. 

SM: Tommy, you said you didn’t expect to win when you arrived at Calder Park this morning – why not? What did you think would beat you?

TS: Man, there’s so many good cars here – I thought, you know, any of those cars could have beat me, and it was actually really close. I was neck and neck with, you know, an RTR Spec Mustang, BMW M2, Audi RS3, and even some of the more muscley cars were really quick in some of the disciplines. 

So yeah, I just didn’t think that that was going to happen.

SM: Were you competitive from the get-go or was there a point in the day when you went, hell – I could win this?.

TS: I’m super competitive. Like, I always feel like I’m gonna do something. I want to do my best. Deep down inside, everyone would always love to win something, right? But it just doesn’t normally happen to me. So for this to have happened I’m elated.

SM: Have you won anything like this before? Have you won a motorkhana?

TS: No, I’ve never done motorkhana, never been around cones. The first time I went to a track was about two years ago. I’ve got a Ford Mustang from [Rob] Herrod’s, and I went to do a track day, and I was just addicted straight away. 

Then I brought this [the BMW M3 Touring], and then I went to the track all the time –I just can’t get enough, it’s amazing. 

I’ve always been a closet petrolhead but you know, having kids and family – that’s the priority – and now that the kids are a bit older, I’m going for it. 

SM: Tell us the story of buying this M3 – you didn’t mean to buy it, did you?

TS: No, I didn’t – I love station wagons, so I’ve had the EH wagon. I’ve had a VE Calais V – that was an amazing car – and I heard this [M3 Touring] was being released. 

So I thought I’ll go to the dealer and have a look. And literally hadn’t even walked in the showroom – we’re in the car park – and the sliding doors opened, and I could see this car, and it’s corny but it was like love at first sight. I hadn’t driven it or knew anything about it, and I said to my son, “Mate, I’m buying this car”. 

SM: And you clearly haven’t looked back?

TS: We bought it and haven’t regretted it, because it does everything. I can go to a track day, or even now – there’s a jack, two toolboxes, ethanol, 98 RON – I can have everything in the back of the car. 

I can even put a full set of track wheels and tyres in there. And I go to the track, take everything out track all day, put all back in, just drive home. I could take it pretty much anywhere and use it as a family car.

SM: You haven’t left it stock though; tell us about the mods? 

TS: It’s a 3.0-litre straight-six twin turbo from BMW – it’s called an S58 – so it’s an M specific engine, which means it’s got forged crank, rods and pistons from factory. 

We’ve upgraded all the coolers on it. There are six coolers on the car: engine oil, transmission oil, a charge-air cooler, primary and secondary radiators and primary and secondary radiators for the air-to-water intercooler – we’ve upgraded all those.

We’ve got front and rear brake cooling, gyro disc floating discs, Brembo endurance pads. I’ve got a carbonfibre hood, carbonfibre entered guards, so that’s helped with cooling – that’s actually made quite a big difference. 

There’s a lot of external aero on it, just, you know, little carbon mods and stuff, a few little things on the inside. We run a custom tune from a guy in America, so he actually did it remotely on a four-wheel dyno.

It puts down about 700 all-wheel horsepower and it just does it – it just doesn’t miss a beat – it does it easy.

SM: You also have aftermarket alloys, but the tyres are what the car comes with from BMW?

TS: Yeah, factory Michelin Pilot Sport, so they’re good in the wet, and they’re good in the dry – they do a little bit of everything. It’s an M car, so it’s pretty big rubber, 20 inch at the front and rear on Apex lightweight wheels. 

SM: Who’s the brains behind this?

TS: Southern BMW. They’ve got all the fastest BMWs in Victoria, like, if you go to Sandown and Phillip Island, they’re the guys, and they’re amazing. Everything they’ve done has been perfect. I’ve never had an experience with a mechanic shop like that before. I’m completely stoked. 

They’ve done a tonne of work on it, and they understand these inside out. So we built sort of club sports spec, KW Clubsport suspension, which is quite adjustable, so high-speed and low-speed compression and high-speed rebound. Pretty much all the mods we can do on it, we’ve done it. You know, it’s got a transmission tune as well.

I think the first time I went in there, my email to Sean at Southern was something like, I’m not gonna make this a track car so how about we just do two or three things … a year and a half later, and yeah, here we are!

SM: So you didn’t mean to buy this car or track it, and you’ve just won Optima Ultimate Street Car? 

TS: It’s a massive thanks to the car itself. Like it’s an amazing car. And one of the reasons I love driving it is because, because people love it, like people love it, it’s different. 

It’s a station wagon, you know, brings a lot of joy to people on the side of the road, and you get a lot of plumbers up and all that. Yeah, I always say to my son, it’s like, we’re Father Christmas – we’re bringing joy to the world one burnout at a time.

SM: You win a trip to 2025 SEMA – have you been?

TS: I’ve watched it on TV, on YouTube all the time – hell yeah we’re going. I can’t wait. I’ll watch all the SEMA videos of all the cars and the releases, and it just looks unbelievable.