Simply The Best - Bmw 2002 still tug at the heartstrings.

SIMPLY BEST

What makes a 17 year old buy an eleven-year old, rusty orange BMW 2002? Growing up in the 70’s, my parents drove Swedish cars. My Mom always drove a Volvo and my Dad a Saab. He was a Car and Driver subscriber and I anxiously awaited the delivery of every issue. As a pre-teen, the ribald language and automotive hijinks that was standard there at the time was very appealing. I absolutely loved all of it, and could not wait to drive. Our local Volvo dealer also happened to sell BMW’s. When my mom picked up her new Volvo wagon in 1980, seeing the new 320i s had me captivated. It had all the sportiness of my Dad’s Saab 99EMS with the additional benefit of rear wheel drive which, as a well-read 13 year old, I “knew” to be superior. Unfortunately, five figures would be more than I could spend on a car for another ten years. Once I got my license and secured gainful employment at minimum wage, I began searching for the car that begat the 320i, the legendary 2002. I had read David E Davis Jr’s now famous article “Turn your Hymnals to 2002”and was smitten. Fortunately, rusty and high mileage cars were relatively plentiful and affordable. This car was the fourth one I test drove and also the only one where I had forgotten to ask the seller about the color before heading out to check it out. In 1985 no one wanted an orange car, but I had driven 30 minutes to see it and figured I had better not insult the owner. The car drove so much better than the others, which, in hindsight, had been badly neglected examples so I bought it despite the color. Fortunately, I assumed (correctly) that Inka orange would be a color I would grow to love. I had already joined the Buckeye Chapter of the BMW CCA months earlier and read about autocross and driving schools and even joined the SCCA. Once I attended my first Buckeye Chapter driving school at Mid Ohio, I was hooked. I had been regularly competing in autocross and had a fair amount of

success with the car but the track events would really change things for me. In 1988, as a student at Mid Ohio, Mike Valentine of radar detector fame was checking out my car and told me that his wife had purchased one just like it brand new back in 1974. He then told a story about carrying a Porsche 914-6 muffler in the trunk that had shifted and made two small dents in the rear panel. As he reached into the trunk to show me where, the dents were there. This was indeed their old car. It turns out that I had purchased it from the second owner. By then the car was rusted pretty badly, compromising its ability to be safely tracked. I had the car completely restored in 1989 and a couple of years later I became an instructor and began using it to instruct at BMW CCA schools at Mid Ohio, Nelson Ledges, Putnam Park and Grattan. The car has all of the typical mods of the era that improve performance without sacrificing drivability.

Drivability was especially important since the car served double duty as my daily driver for all those years. I finally retired it from track use when I replaced it with an E30 M3 around 1994. Since then, the car has been driven only on the street and still cleans up pretty well. In 2005, with 230,000 miles on the odometer, I entered it into the Ault Park Concours in Cincinnati, OH and was fortunate to receive an Award of Excellence. I still really enjoy driving it today since the driving dynamics that made the car so exceptional when it first came out have only been amplified with the weight, complexity and isolation of today’s cars. Sure, heated seats, air bags and ice cold A/C are nice to have, but sometimes it’s worth the trade off to just get behind the (non-power assisted) three spoke steering wheel of an old friend and simply drive.