January 31, 2003
New car
About a month ago, and after many years of ogling, I finally acquired a certain new-to-me old BMW -- a 1988 E30 M3.
The original M3 was the product of BMW Motorsport's desire to win the european touring car championships of the mid- to late-eighties, which was dominated at the time by entries from Mercedes and Ford. The touring car championship was production-based, which meant that at least 5000 examples of your race car had to be sold to the public for operation on the street.
The race car had to be identical in form, layout and engine configuration to the production model -- no extra spoilers, or tube-frame chassis such as you see in some other racing series. So when BMW went out to win the touring car championship, the M3 was the result. Basically a racing car for the road.
And the funny thing is, it's not very good for commuting. It has a high-strung, peaky engine, and the ride is pretty harsh. It responds best in places where you can really wring it out -- either twisty, isolated mountain roads, or race tracks like this one and this one.
And that's exactly how I intend to use it.
Posted by dreeves at January 31, 2003 10:19 PM