First of all, red AND blue have been discontinued. All Sachs dampers are now white label. BUT: The white label still has different levels.

Yes, they have made things unnecessarily complicated for no reason.

There is an exclusive white label successor for the red MSport front dampers: 317-542 and 317-541. Buy these.

For the rear, you have discovered a several year old issue. The exclusive MSport dampers are discontinued and the new white label replacement part is not the same. It has stiffer rebound and softer dampening attributes. It is the 556-882 part that you linked.

You have 3 options.

1. Live with the new 556-882 part
2. Find NOS of the 556-884 part
3. Use E36 M3 rear dampers, which are beefier than the 556-882 part

I went for option 3 and have been very satisfied with it.

I did a write up of all the lore around Sachs dampers here: BUDGET PERFORMANCE SUSPENSION GUIDE (Ultimate E46 OEM+ SACHS Setup)
It includes a picture at the bottom of the new white label dampers that I received in my order.

 

Nice write up.
Man I miss those old Boge "Turbo Gas". Perfect compromise. Little stiffer than the factory but NOT in the old Bilstein HD (Now B6) and the "sport" (Now B8) category in terms of stiffness.

 

Did you consider Koni Special Actives? I installed them last year and am really happy. I certainly noticed they stay more level when I'm cornering but I would not say they feel stiffer over bumps than my old oem ones.

Last month I installed oem Sachs on my 2009 535xi Touring and was quite disappointed that it doesn't really feel much different at all. Unforutunately Koni doesn't make Special Active's for the E60 xdrive models.

 

Nwn i skipped over the answer.

 

I've got B4's in my 320Ci with sports suspension. Rides quite nicely yet is stiff-ish over larger bumps but seems pretty comfy for normal roads.

 

If the vehicle came from the dealer with the sports package then when they do a parts match from the VIN it'll come up with the correct parts. If the sports stuff was fitted later then you'll have to specify that's what you want.
I used RealOEM to find the sports package FCA for my E46 and then used the Lemforder catalogue to find the correct sports FCA. Supposed the only different for this specific part is that the balljoints are HD and somehow that makes them nearlytwice as expensive as the non-sports FCA's shrugs

Yeah, the convertible stuff is in fact different from the coupe.