The biennial emissions inspection for the 3 is due this year, so I got it checked last week before I reregistered the car. The 3 sports an old-skool OBD-I diagnostic port, which is largely useless besides being able to tell you that your OBD scanner tool is, in fact, attached to an automobile.
Later vehicles have an OBD-II port, which allows the emissions center to simply tap into the engine computer and retrieve the O2 (and other) sensor readings for the past few thousand miles.
Since it isn't so equipped, the trip to the emissions center has always resulted in putting the car on the dyno and letting the emissions computer put enough load on the system to simulate real driving—and then sniffing the tailpipe for nasty gasses.
But, I'm not allowed to do this, so the emissions technician got to run my car on the dyno for a few minutes while simulating 25mph driving conditions.
His response? "This car has the best throttle response of any BMW I've ever driven on this machine—and I drive a lot of BMWs."
Why, thank you, emissions technician man. I sure hope you aren't trying to pick me up.
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