Looking For a Family Sedan

Over the winter I had been forced to sell my beloved 88 M3 and get...get... um, a 4 DOOR. The expected arrival of our second child necessitated the move to a car with back doors. An E30 M3 barely has room in the back for one car seat, let alone two, and our three year old daughter Alyssa won't be out of her car seat for another year or so. I put 'Victoria' up for sale in the Roundel. My wife has always had the wagon in the family, and after 12 years together, it was my turn to drive the FAMILY CAR. I agreed, as long as I got to pick WHICH sedan I would be sentenced to. I set out to find the perfect 88 M5, or at least one with 35,000 miles for $10,000. I soon realized how rare these cars are, and how attached most owners became to their cars.

Then the first person to drive the M3 bought it. I now had no wheels, and only two leads on M5's. One of which I wanted, and one I could afford. I had met a lady with one who needed to sell hers since it had 117,000 miles on it, and since she traveled constantly, she needed a car the average mechanic would have a prayer of being able to troubleshoot. The car had been recently traded at a BMW/Nissan dealer, and had been there for some time. The other car had only 50,000 miles, and the owner knew what he had. Rats. I called the used car manager at the BMW store, and set up what I thought was a very attractive deal based on what I remembered about the car.

I chose one of the coldest days of January to make the trip. A friend of mine has a nice 87 325iS, and is always up for a road trip, so John and I left work late in the afternoon to get the car. We hadn't been gone an hour before we knew we were going to have trouble getting to the dealership by closing. John picked the speed up from 65 to 75, then 75 to 80- something. After three hours, we stopped to let the dealership know we were indeed going to be there that evening. I was told that when the "detailer" (And I use the term loosely) went out to clean the car up for delivery, he flooded it. How he managed this in a fuel-injected car was not explained. The car had been pushed into the service department, and technicians were working on it.

At that point, I did not want to drive home three hours just to turn around and drive back later. I decided to spend the night in a hotel if I couldn't get the car started and drive home the next day. Once we arrived, we found the car in the service department and proceeded to thoroughly check it out. The hood was open, and all the plug wires were out. A new box of plugs was on the floor in front of the car, but they had not been installed. While the overall condition of the car was reasonable, I wanted to drive it before handing over a check. At that point, we went looking for the sales manager. He took us back to show us the car, and we met someone from service who was supposed to be in charge of getting it started. He informed me that the technician was having trouble getting the plugs out, and had gone home to grind down one of his 17mm sockets so he could get the tool all the way down into the head. I asked him what happened to the tools in the tool kit and he gave me a great impersonation of a deer staring into a set of Hella high beams...

I'm normally a pretty reasonable guy, but when the head of service in a BMW dealership and two 'certified' technicians don't know that BMW's come with tools, I get pretty impatient. One of the techs started to open the trunk. I asked him to look but don't touch, as I would feel better changing the plugs myself. The car fired instantly, and off we went for a quick shakedown run. The dealership is just off an interstate, so we blasted up the ramp and ran up to just under 100 mph. There was an eighth of a turn of play in the steering, and it wandered terribly. By now the salesman that went along was turning green and getting nervous, so I squeezed the brakes on to take the next exit ramp. The spokes of the steering wheel shook so hard they went blurry, and for an instant I thought I had broken both thumbs. The entire car vibrated so badly it was amazing nothing fell off. Whipping around in my seat, I stared at the salesman. He simply shrugged and said "This car has always done that." As I eased off the interstate to turn around, I noticed there was something spongy under my right foot. Under a street light, I could see an almost full sack of McDonald's french-fries under my heel. I went ballistic. They had never even cleaned out the car. "John," I seethed, "if the oil in this car is dirty, we are going home." The oil had been changed recently, although I couldn't tell if the dealership had done it or the customer had. I took the car home, trying to guess how much pads and rotors were going to cost with only 1200 examples of the car in the US. It wasn't going to be pretty, and I had already decided to sell this car and get another one as long as I didn't have to spend too much to make the car right again. My M3 was almost a show-car level car, and always placed well in the yearly BMW Concourse our club puts on. While I didn't expect to get that level of car, I wanted a nicer one that this was going to be.

I sold the car without much trouble. But now there were no M5's to be found in the category I was looking for, which in the Kelly Blue Book or NADA is labeled "STEAL". I work for a Porsche dealer, and that afternoon a friend of mine stopped by to tell me he was going to upgrade from a 911 to a Turbo. Since I have ALWAYS lusted after a 911, I bought it. I guess I didn't think that through before I went home, and my long-suffering wife was nice enough not to kill me. But I still didn't have a Family Sedan. Driving the 911 was everything I expected it to be. Or, like my 2002 with TORQUE. Same slotcar directness, same seat of the pants visceral thrill. Same intense lack of heat (The temperature is still in the single digits). Over the winter I fixed the heater, brakes, stereo, etc. and by spring managed to have the car in pretty nice shape. With the Pirelli 210 Winter tires, 60% rear weight bias and a working heater blower, I had a blast blowing past trucks, cars, and the like, struggling to get around on all season rubber. Never question the value of dedicated snow tires over a good all-season design. NO CONTEST! One day, a customer of mine dropped by to tell me he was SELLING THE M5 I SOLD HIM almost a year ago! He needed a 4X4, and had to give up his Pride and Joy. I knew the history of the car, all three of the previous owners. I let someone steal the 911, and the right car was mine for the right price.

While the car has 100,000 miles on it, it is very clean. It has 3-piece BBS gold wheels, lightly tinted windows, and a Dinan chip with K&N air filter, which brings the horsepower up to right around 300. I have since gas-slotted the rotors, installed custom water-cooled brakes of my own design, and put in a great CD stereo system with sub woofer.

Several months later the itch for a lower mileage car is started again. I advertised the car in the Roundel again, and the first guy that drove it wanted it. He needed two weeks to get his home equity loan set up. About the same time, I had a customer come through the dealership (I had since moved to Dreyer & Reinbold Motorcars, the local BMW & Infiniti store) with a 132k mi M5. We spoke for several weeks trying to put a deal together, but couldn't. Then suddenly, he stopped returning my phone calls. I frantically left several messages telling him I didn't care if he bought something somewhere else, I wanted to buy his M5 since mine was going away that weekend. Then one evening, a friend of mine in the BMW Club stopped by. "What in the world possessed you to buy a Nissan," he asked. Always a quick thinker, I replied, "Huh?" "Well, isn't that your car down at the local Nissan store?" Aha!" I said. "So that's where that car ended up." The next morning I went down to see it. For $9500, it was mine. The car needed some work, but for the money, I stole it. After fixing it up, I should be able to turn a tidy profit. Life is good.

The next day, the guy backed out on the car I had for sale. I now had 2 M5's I didn't want. My wife, who I had to talk into getting the high-mileage car at any price, was not amused. "I hope the back seats in those cars are comfortable." Uh-Oh...