a few weeks ago, I’ve been driving it around a little bit, dropping in on the forums here and there and, along with my wife and my friends, asking myself “what the hell am I thinking with this old car?”
Because the BMW E28 M5 is a silly car. Perhaps it was superlative when it was new but now it is a machine that time has left behind. It has a motor that isn’t particularly strong, (our family grocery getter, an XC 90 has more ponies, as they like to say in the auto writing world) it doesn’t go very fast, (a new Toyota Camry can keep up), it isn’t particularly well built or appointed (again see the Camry example), it is loud and it rides like a forklift.
Despite all this the car seems to have acquired a small following, which now that I am part of, might warrant some mention. And since I’ve been out shopping for one recently and in contact with a number of owners, I wonder if I’m in as good a position as anyone to comment on who owns these cars here in the summer of 2006. My biases are shaped by only being in touch with those who want to sell their cars and those who communicate on-line; still I think a picture emerges.
First off, this is a car that is owned by men, and primarily men age 30 to 45. One can speculate as to why, I wonder if younger men, generally, don’t have enough money for a cash drain like this and older ones have lost the burn, are selling out and, quite possibility, have wised up. As for the women, you are as likely to find a women talking about the chassis serial number, valve clearances and rims on her M5 as find one stuffing dollar bills in the G-string of an exotic dancer or entering the freshmen class at MIT. There is negligible gender cross over with this car because this is a mechanical car, a linier car, a hierarchical car in the extreme and so far as I can tell it is only men with their mechanical, linier and hierarchical minds who are interested.
So what men bite? The first general classification that appears to a buyer is the division between those who can afford the car and its upkeep and those who can’t. Since the cars trade hands for less than a new Hyundai, around 10K, a fair amount of them end up in the hands of people who aren’t ready for the upkeep bills. In the can-afford category seem to be a lot of engineers and financial services types.
The financial services guys are the ones who put their cars on e-bay photographed next to pictures of their brand new M5s or who, like the guy I bought mine from, meet you at the airport in a new E55 and are wistfully having you help them clean out their garage. These guys, like most guys who make a living selling bonds, trading currency or shorting coal are basically jackasses. They seem to own the cars as conversation pieces, ego boosts or a way to be different, however, in the distraction that too-much-resources creates, I’m not sure how much traction the machines gain upon their imagination. They don't seem to understand the car, a telling comment from the guy who sold his to me was “Last week I’d left the E55 home was driving the M5 when I got stuck in traffic. I got off the freeway and cut through the Oakland hills to get home. God that was great, I’d forgotten how much fun the car is to drive.” What didn’t occur to him is to leave the E55 home every day and cutting through the Oakland hills traffic or no. Instead he was selling the M5 to me and showing the guys at the office how big the 2005 bonus was by what was in his parking space. Poor fellow.
The engineers are in a different class. They know and understand the cars, they are the bedrocks of forums but as a group, being engineers, they just aren’t that interesting. Also not a few of them seem to have traded in their Star Trek based obsession with which episode Kirk escaped Kingon armada with phasar enigmon 11 (or was it phaser enigmon 12) or debating weather Hulk could take The Thing in a fair fight with obsessing about the model numbers, build dates, and compression ratios of their E28 M5’s. Not that this isn’t OK, that’s why they are engineers they take wonderful care of the cars and thank God for them.
The second major category of owners, at least from the point of view of this buyer, is those who can’t afford the cars. They also break down into two categories. First are those who think it’s neat to have an old black BMW that goes fast but don’t know much else. You don’t find these people on the forums but bump into them as they try to sell. They are clueless, their cars have become beaters and they don’t even know it and they are to be avoided by the buyer.
The last group of people who can barely afford their cars and are either looking to sell or are forgoing milk for the children in order to buy another quart of synthetic oil are the owners I like the most. They are the ones hanging in by will, grit and intelligence. They are all over these forums, thoughtful, restrained and quietly passionate. These are the men like the fellow who posted his experience changing out his timing chain. I bit my fingers as I read about how, after two days of trying, he finally got the dampner retaining nut off the shaft with a Dremal tool and nearly clapped when I read how after the job the car started up, the rattle came out of the chain as the tensioner kicked in the car has now gone 600 miles without a hitch. These guys are self-educated mechanics, resourceful and gutsy. They are the heirs to the men who staggered up the Plains of Abraham to attack the British garrison at Quebec, their grandfathers came off the farm, cursed Patton blue and went on to keep the third Army’s tanks on line and barreling toward the Rhine. I’m proud to join them in this minor endeavor.
But why? As Paul DeWitt started to attempt to articulate but eventually broke off, why care at all about these 20 year-old boxy, out-dated cars?
First of all, they’re better looking than you think they are. It’s obvious that their shape is in a different category than the ubiquitous, Chris Bangle inspired, rounded automobiles that the wind tunnels and friction coefficients have bent almost everything on four wheels into over the last 15 years. (Although there is starting to be a backlash, see the new Mustang and Charger). But different how? As far as I can tell the shape of the e28 emerged in the mid-seventies and its design language is rooted firmly in the Bauhaus where bold clear geometry was intended to convey strength and integrity. However the E28s save themselves from being Volvo 240s or Mercedes 300s with the brilliant slight swoop of the hood and that quirky, vaguely menacing backslash of the front grill. They are not quite graceful but not dull either and the tension between the box of the back end and the slant of the front is continually interesting.
Beyond looks there is balance. Again, the motor isn’t that big, the tires aren’t that wide, the car isn’t that quick, the interior is that lux, however, like good wine, skillful diplomacy or a healthy marriage, it keeps its elements in balance. In a distinctly West German way the motor, suspension, brakes and driver environment work together in harmony in the e28 M5, something like the tannins, oak, alcohol and grape work together in an ’88 Lafite. Therefore every drive, like every sip is a potential joy. Every time I’m in the car, particularly after being in new cars in it’s class (there are no older ones) I’m struck by how well all the systems dance together, how tight the car feels and how even for me, a guy who has been living in Manhattan and hasn’t driven regularly for 8 years, the car is cleanly responsive to my instructions.
Finally there is great pleasure to be taken in the age of these cars. 20 years is a long, long time for a complex machine to run in harsh environment and anyone who has an old complex machine that is running well knows that only a magical mix of luck and the focused labor or dozens of men working hundreds of hours has made the experience possible. Every experience in an old car is refracted through this luck and labor and is infinately richer because of it.
I didn’t really know any of this a month ago when I decided to get the car though I intuited that I wanted off the shinny new car trail in on something different, preferable made by tight-lipped West Germans, preferably with soul, preferably something my employees would walk past in the parking lot that would make them more curious than irate.
And so I found the car on-line, made sure it was what it said it was, bought it and flew to San Francisco to pick it up and take it back East. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it initially but got my first hint of the future a day later on I-80 coming East out of Sacramento across the floor of the Central Valley just before dawn.
There were just a few cars on a butter smooth road and the cruise control was set to 80 when some kid in a Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX came weaving up traffic and ended up in front of me. He and the car in the right lane were running even at about ninety, no one in front of them. Hmmmm. I put the M5 in the left lane crept up on that GSX in 5th gear until I was 10 feet off his bumper. Then I did what I like to think the white-coated, short-haired, bespeckled, clip-board carrying Hun who created my machine wanted me to do – I gave that GSX a long steady flash of my brights. GSX did as I expected, he accelerated, moved over to the right hand lane and kept accelerating. I gave him a few seconds to declare himself and then, heel-toe, at 90mph, I dropped into 4th and the 20 year old sleek machine pulled across 4500 to 6500 rpms, joyfully howling like a turbo jet, lunging forward until I put her in fifth and kept going rock steady until I was locked at 140 mph, the GSX disappearing in the rearview mirror as I hurled across the waking Central Valley into the riot of the coming sun.
cheers
a thomas
my eyes started to water up as i read this.
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