Point taken, a lot depends how abusive you are in driving and shifting style. The later M1 variant is substantially stronger in the case.
The original post was alluding to finding something cheaper than a ZF (for road use) and I was trying to illustrate I don't think like for like to handle equivalent HP there is anything much cheaper. Porsche transaxles are equally not geared well and benefit from revised gearing plus billet side plates for V8 applications.
Julian
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