Note: Another submission by regular RG reader, Patrick King. -TK
My second car after a ’69 Dodge Dart GTS 340 was a new 1971 BMW 2002 that left the dealership with many hot rod modifications (although the 45 DCOEs didn’t go on until a 3,000 mile break-in period was complete).
My ’71 autocrossing in ’75.
I daily drove, autocrossed and tracked that car for six years until it was pretty much beaten into submission by my driving style and the Boston winters.
One day on Centre Street in Newton a dark haired beauty on an opposite commute flashed her ’75 VW Scirocco’s headlights at me and the next thing you know we were an item. Partly because I was smitten by a Car and Driver article that opened with a full-spread, full-bleed photograph of the original Giugiaro-designed Scirocco at speed in screaming yellow – but more likely to impress Melanie – I traded my Colorado orange 2002 for a silver, year-old ’76 ‘Rocco. Here’s where a fairy tale might have started but didn’t. Upon closer inspection, my “new” VW appeared to have had hit everything but the Massachusetts lottery so I bought a stripe kit to mask the inferior repaint job the VW dealer had applied and put it up for sale. As for Melanie, the last time I saw her was at one of the legendary parties my roommates and I threw at Davis Avenue in Brookline where I introduced her to the neighbor who would become my ex-wife.
But with the Scirocco gone, what to drive next? Why, a 1970 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, of course – white with blue stripes; metallic blue vinyl upholstery; faux plastic MOMO Prototipo and faux engine-turned dashboard; Ram Air III; 4-speed Hurst… The Poncho didn’t scratch my itch for long though, so despite it having transported my two roommates and me to Chicago for a friend’s wedding – leaving after work on Friday and arriving back at our Boston jobs Monday morning, the tight schedule having prevented further interaction with the Bianca Jagger lookalike seated next to me at dinner – it had to go because I NEEDED another 2002!
An automobile broker named Richard Lorenzini obliged in 1978 with a perfect, low-mileage ’73 in my favorite color, Colorado orange! I drove that car for three years until my right foot again began lusting for Detroit V8 motivation so it was off to Atlanta for another ’69 340 Dart, this time a Swinger. Notice that I was already allergic to rust.
A few months later Kit and I needed something a little more suitable for the drive – with three dogs – to her home town of St. Louis for our wedding. A two-year-old 1980 VW Jetta seemed just the ticket. Mission accomplished, the Jetta went away and we were carless for a period, something I’d experienced many times before, relying on Boston’s excellent public transportation system. Until… That’s right, I absolutely HAD to have another 2002! Instead, I found a straight, rust-free ’68 1600 still wearing its black and yellow California tags. Bingo! Unfortunately, at roughly the same time Kit absolutely HAD to have a house in the country. Thus began a fifteen year period of forty mile commutes from Plymouth to Boston, never less than an hour each way in all kinds of New England weather. Our new carpool friends looked askance at the poor 1600, bereft as it was of heat, let alone air conditioning. Soon it was back to a series of VWs, primarily for their front wheel drive while still retaining that German feel. We looked at Hondas, but nah.
Now, long since divorced, I sit here in Florida with a 2002 325i (Sport Package, 5MT) in my garage, watching with dismay as undamaged, rust-free E46s, including M3s, show up with distressing regularly on Facebook Marketplace as partouts… And lusting for a late model, low-mileage Mustang GT. See? There IS a pattern here!
Ahh, the 2002 the greatest city car in history. Perfect visibility with that huge greenhouse and thin pillars that makes it easy to see all four corners whether parallel parking or slicing through traffic with an eager motor and slick gearbox that in my experience would never do less than about 23 mpg in city driving on regular gas. The only thing it needed was an OD gearbox for road work, and something resembling rust proofing to keep the otherwise sturdy body from dissolving.
A popular swap today is the 5-speed out of an E21 Three Series for easier highway cruising but your comments are spot on.
Given the no speed limit autobahns I always thought it was interesting that it took the Germans so long to put OD gears and/or tall rear axle ratios on their cars. My old 2002 was happily spinning 4,000 RPM at 70 mph, but it easily had the torque to pull an tall OD gear that could have knocked 1,500 RPM off that for much less noise and better MPG, but it wasn’t until the 325e in 1984 that BMW got around to doing that.
If you centralize performance at top speed, an overdrive gear will be a distraction, as the driver keeps on trying to use it, only to loose speed as the engine falls off the cam.
Even in Germany the vast majority of drivers rarely go above about 80 mph so top speed is irrelevant (except for some Beetles and Fiat 500/600s that couldn’t hit 80). I do remember the owners manual of my E3 Bavaria stating that the top speed was 124 mph (6,200 RPM) and that the top sustained cruise speed was 120 mph or 6,000 RPM, but an OD would have been very nice at 70-90 mph cruising even if the car couldn’t pull it to 6 grand.
Interesting the back and fourth between the muscle cars and the small, sporty Germans. It doesn’t seem like there is much interaction between the fans of each. When you switched from one team to the other and back again, was that reflected in who you were hanging with at the time, or was it an effort to keep a foot in both worlds?
Were I to cheat on my Mustang GT, it would be with an Alfa Romeo.
See? It’s NOT just me!
That’s a fair question.
Brock Yates wrote more than once that his cars always displayed both SCCA and NHRA stickers so perhaps my early choice of car magazines influenced my later automotive decisions. My first subscription was to Hot Rod in 1967, followed quickly by Car and Driver. I didn’t subscribe to Road & Track until many years later, finding it a little too “string-back driving gloves and tweed caps” for my taste. Likewise, Hot Rod was too fixated on quarter mile times so I let that subscription lapse. Car and Driver struck the right balance for me, and the writing was superb. I’ve subscribed pretty much continuously from 1968 until today.
More factors: 1) the first magazine I bought on a walk with my father to the corner store was the September 1961 Road & Track with Richie Ginther in the Ferrari 156 sharknose at Monaco on the cover; 2) I was fourteen when Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix” came out and bedazzled as I was by the racing footage in Cinerama I was equally enthralled by the scene where James Garner takes Jessica Walter for a spirited drive on a mountainous French road in his black and gold Shelby GT-350H, shifting, steering and acting all at the same time; 3) my cousin’s brand new ‘64 Pontiac GTO; 4) the upstairs neighbor kid’s ‘65 VW beetle in which I could actually reach the pedals and wiggle the shifter.
Other than that I have no idea where my catholic taste in automobiles and automobile racing comes from.
It wasn’t possible to have it all in those days. European cars tended to have tighter body structures with tidier dimensions, better seats and steering, more controlled and sophisticated suspensions, and 50+% better fuel economy than American “sporty” cars, but they were almost never available with V-8 torque, decent A/C or other power accessories, an automatic transmission, bulletproof reliability and cheap/easily available spare parts, or super swoopy styling that most US cars offered as a reasonable price. The closest any US car came to offering what the Europeans offered was a well optioned Corvair, but Chevy dropped it because they made more money selling Novas/Camaros that shared the same drivetrains as the million selling Impala, while the closest any European car came to offering what the US offered were V-8 Mercedes that cost double the price of a Cadillac and it still didn’t have power seats or cruise control.
So depending on what you needed (or significant other insisted upon) you had to compromise, because you could almost never “have it all” except by switching back and forth.
All true. Automatics on Eurpean cars were so rare that they often wore badges saying so on thier trunks. When my friend restored his ’73 BMW 3.0 and converted it to a 5-speed he left the automatic script on just to tweak people. As for the Corvair, Nader was a convenient excuse.
The Corvair is such an interesting case of stupid bean-counting. In response to the rising foreign car sales, Ford introduced the conventional Falcon and Chevy introduced the technically advanced Corvair. The Falcon greatly outsold the Corvair, but the Falcon sales came mainly from cannibalizing the far more profitable full-size Ford sales, while Corvair attracted import buyers and did not hurt full-size Chevy sales. If you look at foreign car sales after the Corvair was introduced they took a major hit (except for VW), which I think can be attributed almost entirely to the Corvair if offering the technical sophistication and unique styling that many import buyers wanted, but with the Chevy dealer network to keep them serviced and far better performance and luxury than comparably priced imports. Yet instead of saying to themselves “well-done”, GM got bent out of shape because the Corvair was outsold by the Falcon and rushed their conventional Chevy II out, which basically took away sales from the low-end Corvairs leaving only the still popular sporty Monza/Corsa, but without the economies of scale to support them and making the Corvair line less profitable even before Unsafe at Any Speed came out. In other words, GM had a successful template on how to keep US car buyers away from the imports, and they gave up on it in order to pursue Ford in the cannibalization of their own more profitable large cars.
The greatness of the Corvair is in trolling VW. VW’s post war management and ownership was chaotic enough that VW could not figure out what to do as a follow up. By the 1960s, the Beetle was counterculture here, but an old person’s car at home. So just for fun, and at the top of it’s game, GM built what VW should have. Interesting even with a template, the 411 response was not even close to the same level.
As far as the Corvair attracting inport buyers, maybe a few. Notice it was that car that the plaintive lawyers went after, perhaps the import buyer didn’t want to be brought home.
Lawyers always go after defendants with deep pockets, and nobody had deeper pockets during the Corvair era than GM. Postwar VW management shares a lot of similarities with Ford management during the Model T era (i.e. Henry), because in both cases the product that had made the companies billions became obsolete and for sentimental or bean-counter reasons it was difficult/expensive to replace it with something no one was certain would be as popular and profitable as the Beetle/T had been.
Notice also the trumpted up cases against the 70s Pinto, the 90s Explorer and the 1980 Citation, vehicles doing an even better job of bringing back import buyers. There was an agenda behind the incidental money grubbing.
Morley Safer as much as admitted he created the Audi 5000S/60 Minutes hit piece because he hated Germans in an interview with Automobile Magazine. He was asked about the story and his response was that when he met his wife, she was driving a VW; he insisted that she sell it if they were to continue courting. The mainstream media doesn’t have any use for objectivity when they can have agendas instead.
The 1977 E21 320i had a 5-speed though perhaps not an OD. I test drove an ’83 but by then the car was so heavy and the now 1.8 litre so gutless that I took a pass.
The problem with the E21 OD 5 speed (from 1980 on with the 1.8) was that it was only a 20% reduction in RPM from direct drive 4th, which meant instead of spinning 4K at 70 you would still be spinning 3200 which is not exactly relaxed. I suspect they did not put a taller OD in because the weaker torque of the 1.8 would have bogged down on hills or with loads at lower RPM, which was a problem that was solved with the eta motor that in my experience got better real world MPG than the e21 1.8 while being far quicker and smoother.
Gotta remember to click “reply” for the thread tomake sense.
Good points.
Exactly as I remember it. Great insights!
I still remember the first Corvair I saw, right outside church. It was a brand-new, metallic burgundy, first-gen Monza stick-shift covertible and I was immediately smitten. Perhaps another clue to my domestic/import predilictions!
The 411 could not have goofier looking.
Throw in slow, unreliable, and expensive and you have a real winner.
And fire prone too!
Patrick – did you autocross any of your vehicles besides the 2002? Whether you did or not, how would you rank the handling of your wide assortment of vehicles in autocross type of settings?
Only my first 2002, the one pictured above: SCCA and a couple of Massachusetts clubs, OKRT and COM. Also, track days at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut where this shot was taken.
No doubt I sound spoiled, and I don’t deny it, but neither of my parents drove. A car nut since I was three (no exaggeration, proof upon request) I convinced them we needed a “family” car” as driving age approached. The factory-ordered Dart GTS arrived a month early, shortly before I had my full license; at this point I feel safe in admitting that I drove the car to high school a couple of times on my learners permit.
As to the Bimmer, in 1971 the automotive scene was binary. I you wanted build quality, good handling and gas mileage and features like disc brakes and independent rear suspension you went European (Japanese brands were largely a non-factor at the time). If you wanted straight line grunt you chose American. A friend owned a Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3, so fast V8 German sedans existed but they didn’t come cheap.
Old timers love to site the David E. Davis, Jr. Car and Driver article, “Turn Your Hymnals to 2002” as the tipping point that lead to decades of BMW ownership. It certainly acted as confirmation bias for me but I’d been ogling the 2002 before that. Frequent trips to the Out of Town News Agency in Harvard Square revealed a whole other automotive world in the pages of “auto motor und sport,” “Autosprint” and “MotorSport.” A photograph of a Colorado orange 2002 Alpina race car lifting its left front wheel at the Nürburgring skewed my automotive focus from that point on.
When it came time to replace the Dart I briefly considered the Alfa Romeo Giulia sedan and the Rover 2000 TC but eventually settled on the Bimmer. The 2002tii wouldn’t be introduced for another year so the high-performance model in 1971 was the twin-carb 2002ti, a variant not sold in the US. Hassel Motors in New York offered ti clones using twin Weber 45 DCOEs in place of the factory Solex PHH 40s. I found a BMW/Peugeot dealer in Everett, Massachusetts – Foreign Engine Company – that did the same thing so I authorized the build.
My 2002 left the dealership with many of its factory parts discarded and replaced with racing-oriented bits: Koni shocks; bigger sway bars (22mm front/18mm rear); tubular header into a center-exit Abarth exhaust; CD ignition; Borrani/Alpina steel wheels; Cibié driving lights; and a 13” MOMO Prototipo steering wheel. The Webers didn’t go on until after a 3,000 mile break-in period that included a non-stop drive with friends from Boston to Manalapan, Florida, back when I-95 didn’t go all the way through, necessitating detours onto U.S. Route 1 through the deep south in a funny little pumpkin orange furrin car (a story in itself). Remember, northern kids wore the long hair back then, not southerners (see “Easy Rider”). Somewhere I have before-and-after photos with and without my long hair and beard just prior to the trip.
Now, what was your question? Ah yes, handling. The only car I ever autocrossed was my first 2002 and its handling was superb. Because of the Weber carbs I was assigned to the “Prepared” class where I routinely beat all manner of cars, including a hopped-up VW beetle whose owner trailered it to events. One that I never came close to catching was a Meyers Manx, also trailered.
The Dart handled well too, in its own powerslide way, drifting before it was a thing! I’d chosen that car over bigger sixties muscle cars precisely because of its size, unibody construction and recently introduced, state-of the-art, high-performance small block. The handling/power balance worked well for its era.
Patrick, as long as your “bearded wonders”, as my father used to call them, friends kept their hands off our women until you hit the Florida line, I would have thought you would have no trouble in the deep South, even in an orange German car. We lived in Savannah, and my mother was often opening our home to my older brother’s fraternity friends from Cornell on their way or way back from Florida on I-95. No hair cut, shave or even being married to the girl you were traveling with required.
Oh, we weren’t threatened, it was more like culture shock shock seeing a Sunoco station right out of a TV commercial except for the three restrooms, or another gas station – much shabbier – with nothing but black guys out front giving us the “What are YOU doing here?” look.
Anyway, the three guys travelling with me were clean cut preppies but I was going through my short-lived hipppie period. They suggested I lose the beard and shoulder-length hair, just to be on the safe side.
Lose one “shock.” Just like Twitter, RG needs an edit button.
I can’t afford it!
Baruth Farms needs a tractor or some other implements! 👍
And/or you’re needing to remodel the existing house on your property or build a new one.
Understood! 😎 I don’t envy the work you’ve got ahead of you—the story of the purge of your Powell residence, complete with skittering away with thirty minutes to spare, exhausted me just reading it! Wowzers!
Great article! I grew up in a small Kentucky town and my family never drove anything but Fords and Chevrolets. Still, I got hooked on BMWs back in 1971 at the age of 13- blame it on me finding David E. Davis’ article Turn Your Hymnals to 2002 as well as an ad mentioning that the BMW Bavaria would cruise at 120 mph. I spent my early driving years street racing a 350 Chevy Monte Carlo that a friend of mine and I built(I still get asked to rebuild Q-Jet carburetors), but once I was out of school(1982) I began my hunt for a used BMW. In 1983 my girlfriend(now wife) found a very nice 1973 Bavaria just up the road from her apartment in Cincinnati. Within a week I sold my Arrow 2.6 GT and the Bavaria was all mine. I haven’t looked back since. That said, I still own one American car- a 1999 Wrangler Sahara- and I love it. Since 1983 my serial BMW ownnership was only interrupted once- by a new 2007 Mazdaspeed 3. I’m still tempted by a Mach 1 or Bullitt, but right now I’m still loving my 8 year old M235i.
What is this? You and Patrick seem to be two satisfied owners of out-of-warranty “modern” BMWs? Don’t you know that any BMW built since the e30 is impossible/stupid to own after the warranty runs out and the vehicle needs an extremely costly new motor, gearbox, or suspension rebuild every single year because modern BMWs are designed to self-destruct as soon as the lease and/or warranty expires?
I’ve owned 12 BMWs since 1983; at present I have the M235i, a 2015 X1, a 1995 318ti Club Sport(owned since new) and a 2009 Cooper Clubman. According to many self-proclaimed “experts” I should be on my third or fourth Chapter 7 and living in a cardboard box under an overpass.
Hey, there’s an exception to every rule. Bailey and I are unicorn owners!
The black 2002 325i in my article had 79,000 miles on it when I flew from Boston to West Palm Beach in April 2015 and paid $7,000 for it. Although I drove it home to Massachusetts and briefly registered it there, in August I transferred from the Hingham Apple store to the Orlando one, so the car has never seen snow. I mention “rust-free” a lot because once a car is exposed to road salt it’s never the same.
Incidentally, I’ve kept strict track of the cost to keep the car in decent shape, including the purchase price but excluding gas, insurance and taxes. I just looked and the total as of today is $21,645.73 over the 140,000+ miles I’ve put on it. It’s running great although it’s had every component in the cooling system replaced at least once because Germans don’t know how to make the plastic they use too much of, plus it needs a clutch. That last really annoys me because I’ve taken three VWs over 200,000 miles and sold them with their original clutches, the last a ‘98 VR6 Jetta with 256,000 miles on the clock and its original clutch that still bit like a bear trap!
Rust destroyed the Jetta. The guy I sold it to in New Hampshire had to resell it to a friend in Massachusetts because the holes in the floor rendered it incapable of passing inspection in the “Live Free or Die” state. What? A state government with stricter safety standards than those in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? Strange but true!
According to my math, your 325i now has 220,000+ miles on the original clutch and you don’t know how it was driven during the first 79,000 miles and 13 years of its life, so I don’t think that is much to complain about. You have also spent about $14K on maintenance and repairs to cover 140,000+ miles, which works out to be $1K per 10,000 miles on what is a fairly elderly car that could be expected to need some replacements such as new cooling system components, suspension bits, A/C compressors/alternators, clutches, etc. at that age and mileage, plus normal oil changes, 2-3 sets of tires, and other regularly scheduled maintenance. Thus your figures do not sound bad at all, because you would have spent a lot more that $21K (i.e. $1,333 per 10,000 miles) leasing two to three new 3 series during your ownership period, as right now a base 330i requires $5K down and $529 per month for a 3 year 30,000 mile lease (or about $7K per 10,000 miles). Furthermore, it looks like your car might be worth $5K these days, so your total ownership cost would be $16K.
I budget $450 per month for service and repairs for all five of my vehicles. I used to be more DIY oriented but I stupidly decided to go back to work for a few years so often I don’t have the time to wrench on a car.
Thanks for doing the math and proving my point.
I haven’t had a car payment since 1997 (a new 1994 Golf LE/Sport/GTI but not really a GTI), always paying cash for cars since. But, dollars aside, I’d own an E46 anyway because it represents the high water mark among Three Series generations. Obviously, I’d love an M3 but a 330i ZHP would be just dandy. In fact, as pretty as the two-door is I’ve come to appreciate the sedan, and the E46 M3 was the only iteration never available as a four door. Funny, there’s no longer such a thing as a four-door M3.
Also, I haven’t owned a car with frameless door glass since my 2002s. Note that most E46 race cars are sedans, many with their sunroof mechanisms removed and the glass replaced with a carbon fibre insert. Something about an E46 coupe just seems a little flimsy to me.
More on my 325i.
I’m the fourth owner. According to CARFAX, owner number one kept the car for nine months, the second owner for two months, and the woman who owned it before me for eleven years and nine months, racking up a whopping 6,822 miles per year.
In the owner’s packet I found a handicapped parking permit application and an E90s-era BMW CCA membership flier. I purchased the car from Autoland of West in Royal Palm Beach, Florida. Every car they sell, mostly European, is a near perfect example of the model.
Given everything I know about my car I feel comfortable in believing that it was never abused before I became its custodian.
QuadraJet! My 340 Dart(s) came with the Carter AFB. How do I remember these details? They just won’t go away!
Great story, not dissimilar to mine, including the Davis article (see my response, above).
Also, I did a cross-country trip in 1973 with friends in a 1972 Bavaria belonging to one of them. I mentioned “Easy Rider” and I just remembered that we happened to meet a co-producer of that film in Carmel on that trip.
Tom, you should connect your friend Patrick with Rob Seigel as he has an accumulation (by Jack’s definition) of BMB 2002’s. 🙂 See link below….
Thanks Lynn.
As BMWCCA memember #739 I’ve known Rob and followed his writing in Roundel and online for years, although I’ve only met him in person twice.
I’m BMW CCA member #32741; I joined about one year before I bought the Bavaria.
What can I say, there at the Creation. 🙂
Actually, the club began in my hometown of Brighton, a neighborhood in Boston. For many years the club headquarters was in Cambridge.
Jack: “I can’t afford it!”
Because of the additional coding or to ensure that people don’t try to change the past?
I’m just making a joke. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to do, truth be told
Wry…
Oh, while you’re at: when notice of a new comment hits my email and I click “Reply” I then have to search for the comment in question. Otherwise, my reply appears at the bottom of the thread, flush left, so it’s unclear what comment I’m responding to.
I’ve had my head wrapped around a complex WordPress site I’ve been building from scratch so this kind of thing jumps out at me. That, plus four decades as graphic designer dating back to the hot-wax-and-ruling-pen era.
Alright, I’ve got to jump to jump in the shower before Coffee with Scott Adams, which I believe you recommended. Or was it Mr. Upinthevalley?
Cheers
Replying to CJinSD:
I knew Morley hated German cars because of WWII but I hadn’t heard the Audi story. Oddly, he loved Ferraris and Mussolini wasn’t a nice chap either.
I wonder how Morley got along with Andy Rooney, who seemed to be partial to BMWs despite war duty for Stars and Stripes during WWII.
Good question.