Ultimate Drive

Car Camo Considered

bmw m4 camo small

This is the back end of the new BMW M4 covered in camo because they are not ready to actually debut them yet, although they are out test driving them. I drove its predecessor, the M3, back in 2008 at a Susan B Komen Ultimate Drive and effervesced about the experience:

414HP V-8. Yikes! This car should be illegal, but I’m glad it is not. Just the exhaust note alone is enough to make the hairs on your arm stand up. Not deep throaty Detroit rumble, but raspy, race car purposeful. One suggestion, when you mash the go pedal to the floor you should already have your head back on the headrest or it will be snapped back to it. This is as close as you can get to experiencing a catapult launch from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier on land, unless you drag race funny cars on the weekend.

If I was really rich, or kinda rich and single, this thing would be my daily driver, but seeing as I’m neither of those things I drive a 10 year-old Miata (not that there is anything wrong with that.)

What I think might be cool, and I wouldn’t even have to be rich, would be to find a place that vinyl wraps cars and cover the Miata in that black & white swirly camo. Although, I think to do that I would need to be single, or if I did that without asking for permission, I would end up single. 🙂

Not The Ultimate Drive

Was it the current tough times or was that just the excuse they needed, or maybe they were going to stop after 12 years no matter what, but BMW didn’t do the Ultimate Drive For Susan G Komen this year. Both Donna and missed doing it too.

A fellow MMC member emailed me the other day and wanted to know if I knew about a program from Ford that would donate $20 to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure for test driving a Ford. Didn’t, but we are tempted, so we took the first step, registering for a test drive certificate here. It is not as much money as we would raise in a day driving BMWs, but still, driving someone else’s new car and raising money for a good cause can’t be half bad.

There is a dealer in Traveler’s Rest, SC that was even matching it with another twenty, but we had just got back from up that way visiting my sister, so we didn’t necessarily want to go back up there.

If I was buying a Ford it would be a Mustang GT convertible with a manual transmission, so I set out to see if any of the local dealers had one like that. Nope. Convertibles were extremely rare and ones with a manual transmission were non existent.

What’s strange is that the dealer in Traveler’s Rest, George Coleman Ford, has 4 Mustangs and 2 of them are convertibles.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 224

A Miata Is Not Always As Good As A Pickup Truck On A Sunny Day

In spite of my repeated protestations to the positive, every once in a while you do need a pickup truck.

Tonight we went to the Home Depot in Evans to buy the vanity that was supposedly online order only. While we were there we bought the top too, went with a Beige because the Blue Pearl was more black than blue and they had a Beige one right there in stock for $199 instead of ordering the Blue Pearl for $465. To the cart we tossed in the matching mirror, two wood framed medicine cabinets and a couple of new exhaust fan / light combos. Try as I might, no matter how I arranged them, I just couldn’t get all that stuff in the trunk.

Rudy and his S10 to the rescue. He and Patti were nice enough to make the round trip from and back to Evans to haul our bathroom bounty. All it cost me was an ice cream cone for each of them. Thanks guys.

If you ever find yourself in Evans at dinner time both Donna and I highly recommend the Pork Anticuchos at Patagonia Grill.

If you have been waiting patiently for my witty captions to the BMW Ultimate Drive on Tuesday, your wait is over – 2008 BMW Ultimate Drive Gallery.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 94

Just A Kid

Mmmm3 CoupeAs always when the BMW Ultimate Drive comes to town I try to talk everyone I know into participating. So far with my co-workers I have had limited success, but with the fellow MMC members I have had better luck.

This year I had almost talked one of our young engineers into doing it. He was on the fence until I mentioned that they had an M3 Coupe in the line up, then he started leaning. He currently drives a tarted up Lexus IS250 with inspirations of turbo charging it.

When Donna and I left work on Monday he said call him if they had the M3 available and he would seriously consider taking a half day off. When we saw the M3 sitting there in the morning I gave him a call, he said he would be there in the afternoon. Because it was just sitting there waiting, Donna and I took our first loop in it. A couple of miles into our loop and having listened to the sound coming from the exhaust pipes when mainlining bursts of acceleration I told Donna to call Ian’s work phone. I wanted to seal the deal and make sure he came over by having her hold the phone out the window when I punched it. He must have been working because he didn’t pick up.

Turns out he didn’t need that sound incentive because up he drove at about 12:45. At that point the Survivor Drive was in progress so there were no cars to drive. I told him to park and go inside to register. At that point of the day it was taking a while to register, so it took about 20 minutes before he showed up back outside. He had a disappointed look on his face, turns out you have to be 30 years old to drive the M3. He wasn’t to badly hurt because he had lined up a round of golf for later that afternoon, so he just got there early and hit a bucket of balls before playing.

I think Donna and I felt worse about it than he did. I didn’t think anything of it when I asked him to come drive. I thought there might be a 25 year-old age limit on the 6 & 7 Series cars, but I didn’t know about the extra 5 years needed for the M3 Coupe. Because he is so mature acting I thought he was in his upper 20’s, but as it turns out Ian isn’t even old enough to drive the 6s or 7s. He is only 23.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 92

BMW Ultimate Drive Day

We drove 8 loops in seven different cars for a total of 113.6 dollars raised to help fight breast cancer.

  1. M3 Coupe
  2. X3 3.0i
  3. 650i Coupe
  4. Z4 3.0i
  5. 528xi Sedan
  6. Z4 3.0i
  7. 750Li
  8. 535xi Sport Wagon

There were a few surprises for us today. Two of the available cars actually had manual transmissions. One of the cars that had a manual transmission was the M3 Coupe. It was not on the reservation form, but once there they put you on a list (if you were over thirty, sorry Ian), and when your turn came…woohoo. The other stick shift was a Z4 3.0si, which we didn’t end up driving.There were no 1 Series or no X6 to drive (the signature car was an X6.) Both of these vehicles are supposed to join the fleet at the end of the month.

The biggest surprise was they held a survivor’s lap at 12:30 that lined up every car with a breast cancer survivor in it and was given a police escort around the course. Good for them, but they should have done it first thing in the morning, because it took a two hour chunk of time out of the middle of the day. Good thing we had the whole day off from work and didn’t do just an afternoon off or we would have only got in two laps.

The gallery is here: BMW Ultimate Drive 2008.

I’ll write more about the experience later this week too.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 90

Weekend Wrap Up

We went downtown last night to get an ice cream. The place was hopping. That was to be expected because the middle jewel of Aiken’s Triple Crown, the Spring Steeplechase, was yesterday and it routinely attracts 30,000 people and a lot of them hang around town long after. The restaurants were packed and there were several venues with live music. We arrived at the Sweet Cow Creamery at just the right time, we were next in line to be served and by the time I paid for our ice cream there were a half dozen people storming the door to get in.

This morning after watching last Thursday’s episode of Lost with breakfast, we went out and got lost in Hitchcock Woods. As usual, we were not really lost, we just didn’t know exactly where we were. The map hasn’t been updated in a long while and there are quite a few new trails that can confuse us for a short while.

To help you through the next few dark days until April 24th, go to the Lost Island Video and see want some talented Losties have created.

So far I am 31 of 48 in my March Madness picks leaving me only 20 points behind the leaders and next round games are worth 15 points. That’s the good news, the bad news is that there are still 15 of the 21 people entered ahead of me. Unlike last year when I watched none of the games, this year I have actually watched a few of the games. The b-ball players these days love their tats. There was one guy playing for Memphis who I could have sworn had the whole Declaration of Independence tattooed on his upper arm.

We are taking the day off from work Tuesday because the BMW’s are coming to town. We can’t start driving until 9:00AM, but that is OK because I have the perfect way to spend those pre drive hours — baseball. The FRS open the season in Japan against Oakland and the game starts at 6:00AM on ESPN2.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 86

Can You Say M3?

MonumentClose-up of some text on the Civil War monument in front of the Clarendon County Courthouse in Manning, SC. Manning was our last Post Office stop of the day yesterday, so we got out and took a walk around the downtown before hopping in the car for the return home.

The pictures from all 20 of this weekend’s Post Offices are online in the old school gallery. Most interesting tidbit from yesterday’s catch was Alcolu which has the distinction of having the lowest number Zip Code in the State – 29001. The highest number Zip Code is 29945 which belongs to Yemassee was captured last August. The first city alphabetically is Abbeville – 29620 and the last is York – 29745.

While searching out info on the upcoming BMW Ultimate Drive Donna stumbled on a link to a post on the BMW Blog that gives a review of a drive in the new M3. I’ve got to get a ride in one of them. It will be interesting to compare the M back to back to a regular 3 coupe. The Ultimate drive hasn’t had an M version of a car since way back in 1999 when the Z3 M Coupe made the rounds. Should be interesting, I wonder if this thing will have a manual transmission?

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 62