[V8] I'm feeling like a rant about old cars....

[Roger M. Woodbury]

I made an appointment to have the station wagon get its annual state 
inspection this week.  It'll have north of 205k when it goes to the 
wrench on the 30th, which is the soonest he can take the car.  It will 
get its winter tires put on and a new left hand side exhaust flange and 
a new windshield which is all it will need to pass inspection, I think 
(read:  HOPE!).  It's performed really, really well through the summer 
and fall except for that one time that it wouldn't start and after 
speaking with the wrench on the phone, the diagnosis was a dead fuel 
pump.  BUT, half an hour later the car started with no hesitation, so I 
have assumed there might have been a bit of crud n the tank that 
momentarily clogged the pump and then floated away.  At any rate, no 
subsequent hesitations so I'm not going to fix it until I know it's broken.

By the close of business today, both sides of the garage will be empty 
and ready for cars. The V8 will get stuffed back in the left side and 
its battery tender turned on and the 100 CS Avant will be back in the 
left, my use of the garage as a woodworking shop for the summer 
officially over for this year.  The V8 will rest until spring and my 
intention right now is to get it to the wrench for a tweaking, new a/c 
compressor and then put it on the road for a summer/fall car.  It'll 
need tires, too.

But I've also been thinking about other old cars. Those cars that have 
remained on my bucket list for years and years. This particular spate of 
old-car-think has revolved around the roundel cars....those from the 
other side of the Black Forest, BMW.  I've had a few of those cars over 
the years.  First there were two BMW 1600's in the garage, one for me 
and one for my, then, new wife. My car was one of the 12 BMW Alpina-cars 
imported in 1967.  That car had sway bars front and rear, special 
"Alpina" tach and 40 DCOE Weber carburetors.  It was pretty quick and my 
wife and I autocrossed the devil out of it in that year and a half 
before Southeast Asia beckoned me and the car got to sit still.  It 
finally went away in favor of a Volvo station wagon around 1973, if 
memory serves.  (My wife's 1600 went away after it was assaulted by a 
Chevy Camaro or something late one night, and it turned into a Porsche 
912....a long time ago that was now.)

Then I had a BMW 320i which was my daily driver as I grew my insurance 
agency here in Maine.  Lovely car, really, but VERY expensive to 
maintain, at least the way I maintained it.  It became my first Audi, a 
Coupe in 1982 after it had accumulated 120,000 miles in a bit more than 
two years.

The Audi was a failure.  Terrible riding car on Maine's rough winter 
roads and by 16,000 miles in the first half year, the seams along the 
rocker panels had begun to corrode and one was separating.  Traded it in 
on a new, BMW 318i, which was the WORST car I've ever owned from new.  
Even my old Mercedes 220S HYDRAK car was better because it cost only a 
pittance and was old when it came along so the electro-hydraulic clutch 
could be forgiven a lot considering. But the BMW's refusal to run 
properly without premium gas AND $4 per can octane boost couldn't, 
especially when one considers the failure of transmission synchronizers 
twice in 60,000 miles....("They all do that," the factory rep told me. 
"Just wait for the new 325.  It's a much better engine!")

I said, "No thanks" to the BMW rep and traded the 318 in on my first new 
Mercedes, a 190D in 1985.  Got a LOT of money for the 318 in trade, too.

Later after retiring, in a fantasy move, I bought a "restored" BMW E9 
coupe from a guy in White Plains, New York. Drove down with an auto 
transporter behind the Ford pickup I owned then and hauled the thing 
back. Straight to the wrench for inspection, my intent was to drive the 
car as a summer vehicle. The restoration had involved quite a bit of 
body work and I was well acquainted with the E9's propensity to rust as 
you watched it, and this one had been restored pretty well.  I wanted it 
to be a six or eight thousand mile per year car and then sleep through 
the late fall, winter and early spring.

Well, that inaugural visit to the wrench involved removal of the head 
chasing down a skip that wouldn't go away.  Ended up rebuilding the head 
and top end which sort of took the edge of the E9.  Mine wasn't really, 
REALLY good enough to keep forever, as it turned out.  It also was, well 
OLD and felt like it.  Oh, I don't think it was any "older" than it 
should have been expected to be, but it was old in 1993 and just wasn't 
the satisfying experience that I had been looking for.  It went to the 
Owls Head Museum consignment auction a year later and I got most of my 
money out of it.  Well, SOME of my money, I guess is the truth.  Mostly 
I figured my interest in BMW's was gone, that particular itch scratched 
enough.

But lately I've fallen back into the BMW fantasy mode again. This time 
it's an E24 coupe.  I almost bought one of these in 1977 just after I 
bought my first insurance agency in Waterville, Maine. The agency's 
largest client was the Buick/Olds/GMC dealer who also had a BMW and 
Subaru franchise.  I had bought an Oldsmobile Cutlass hold-over just 
after buying the agency, hoping that if the new guy to town bought a new 
car first off, the dealership would give me a bit of time to develop a 
relationship.  It worked out well, but  the Olds didn't:  it was 
TERRIBLE to drive hard on the back roads that I frequented through 
central and eastern Maine, and I knew I was really over-driving that 
poor old thing. Besides, I REALLY wanted that gentle, green BMW coupe 
that was a left-over.  I actually got it to my office driveway and my 
plates on it, until I figured out that I really, REALLY couldn't afford 
it, so it went back in favor of the 320i.  But I never forgot the 630i 
Coupe I almost had.

So lately I've been looking at the BMW coupes again.  No, I don't need 
one, and don't want one of the BMW M coupes that go zoom-zoom and for 
some strange reason as so terribly expensive. But the 1987 L6 couples 
are pretty nice and don't go for much money.  Right now there's a very, 
very nice L6 coupe on eBay with 75000 miles or so.  I showed it to my 
wife and she agrees:  that could be the car!  (The automatic 
transmission is so that my wife can drive it, otherwise ANY car is a 
non-starter in the house. My wife is so severly clutch challenged that 
shifting gears is a fond, distant memory and since she does all the 
cooking, it behooves me to forget I have a left foot entirely.).

Alas, I do not have any garage space now for an L6.  There's a high-mile 
L6 on Ebay at the moment too. That one purportedly is nearly a one-owner 
car (bought new by the seller's mother).  What makes that of interst is 
that it will go for cheap and supposedly has every service record ever 
written for the car.  I guess not now though....and I won't give up the 
V8 for a BMW coupe, either, because the V8 is.....well, you know.

Roger