First impressions:
A little history to begin the story. I originally decided to buy the M5 back in April and was lucky enough to run across a recent cancellation by someone else. I was able to secure a late-May build date for my beast. I had no doubt in my mind from the very beginning that I would want a blue one with a two-tone sportive interior. I wasn't sure though about getting black/silverstone or black/lemans blue before settling on the latter. I also initially ordered bruyere's wood too thinking that would be a good combination. Every option would also be had too since I was paying a markup of $4,000 which would include all the options. To get more for the money with the markup I elected at first to go with all the options bringing the actual markup down to $2,500 which wasn't so bad. Later I changed my order by taking out the fold-down seats since I'd heard too many horror stories about the ski-sack bag not fitting properly or the seats causing some undue flexing. So, in the end I would be paying a $3,000 markup with an anticipated build date of late May.
A few weeks into the long wait I happened to run across bmwm5.com and all that it brought for me!
It's probably the worst thing for M5'ers to find this board since it caused me and many others I'm sure to spend more money than intended on aftermarket parts to "juice" up the beast! But in the end, I don't regret things one bit, I'm glad I did. Recently, I had the honor of meeting my very first bmwm5'er, HawaiiM5 on my trip to Maui and that went well. Not only did I get to ride AND drive his beautiful (lemans) beast but I also got a nice dinner and breakfast out of it too. (Thanks Lorin!) I would have never had this chance if not for this board! So let me say that you guys are awesome and I can't wait to meet more of you especially the guys going to the Driving Experience with me in September!
Okay, I'm avoiding the real point of this post and that is my own first impressions of the beast!
I arrived back from my trip after a 9 hour long layover in Los Angeles so you can imagine how jet lagged I was having had very little sleep. I think that I was running on pure adrenline that whole day. Touching base in Seattle around 9:30 am, I headed first home to get my checkbook and a few other essential "M5" stuff such as a camera, my M5 keyring and of course my beloved V1. I arrived at the dealership around 11 am. Many of you guys guessed that I would head straight to the dealership to the airport!
Needless to say my salesperson was off for the day! Due to some miscommunication, he thought I was coming in on the following day! Luckily, I had been dealing with two salesmen as a "just in case" measure having had one as a backup whenever the other was not in. Both are sharing the commission in case you were wondering. And so thus, I ended up dealing with my "backup" salesman, Corey. Thusly, as I said, they were not expecting me to arrive a day early so my M5 was still parked in the back lot having just come out of the shop where they were detailing and installing the VR module. BTW, I also got them to throw the VR module and an extra Navigation CD in with my car on top of the other things. Lorin mentioned having been introduced to every key member at the dealership and getting the red carpet treatment. No such thing happened for me since I was pretty much unexpected. So, after a bit of a waiting I was able to get things in order such as signing a few things, paying for the car, getting the car key options set up, going through the usual features of the car (even though I already knew about most of them thanks to you guys) and getting those extra bottles of 5W-30 synthetic oil. After about an hour, I was finally able to hit the road! This would not be my first time to drive the beast since Lorin already gave me that chance but it would be the first time to drive my own and as I'm sure you guys know, there's nothing else quite like it. I took a couple of city roads around the area to familarize myself with the beast! I don't plan to do any real driving until I get the stongard clear bra put on tomorrow morning. I can say now that this beast definitely has power! Lots of it...so intoxicating that I found my right foot just begging to push further and further down on the "happy" pedal. I managed to restrain myself enough to keep it under wraps at under 100 mph/4500 rpms. The sound isn't sweet enough though. After having listened to Lorin's Dinan exhaust on his beast, that's something I plan to have put on first thing next week! The rumble that emanates from those beastly exhausts is just beyond words. Words don't even do it justice either. Anyways, so for a few hours I tinkered around town driving as conservatively as possilble as not to attract too much unwanted attention from our friendly police officers since I'm in a city infested with them it seems. I didn't get any second glances from any of them for not having a front license plate,
....maybe I can get away with this even after I get my license plate. I'm still trying to decide on a plate that would fit. I've chosen "M5Power" which is available. So, we'll see when the time comes. Later in the day, a friend of mine came over and helped me install the HID fog light bulbs. We also went over to his place since he had some tools that I didn't to finish up the job. We replaced the stock headlight housings with the euro-spec ones with the clear lenses. I also took this chance to install the silvervision bulbs in the front which popped right in. Surprisingly, the rear ones didn't pop right in without me having to file off one of the nubs. Weird! Since Lorin's popped right in the rear ones! I wonder if all M5's are not created equal even the '01 ones!
I also took this chance to install the Dinan front tower strut brace too. I still have a lot of other parts that has to be installed so I'll give you guys an update on things later on when the time comes. Tomorrow I'm getting the stongard and the radar detector (V1) installed. Next week I'll have the MB quartz tweeters/mid drivers installed in the front door along with the Phoenix gold amp. Honestly, many of you guys think that the M-audio sounds fine as it is but after having listened to my own home stereo, I can hear the difference. I'm planning to do a lot of driving in the beast and so I wanted quality speakers for the smallest amount of money possible. I would rather spend the money on other parts!
I haven't been able to find a free photo hosting site to put the pictures up on and post them on here and so I'll just post a few pictures here that's on my own web server. More pictures will definitely be posted later on in the gallery.
Sorry for the LONG post and enjoy the pictures!
With the euro-spec clear headlight units, HID foglights and the silvervision bulbs all installed!
In it's new home!
Waiting for me at the dealership delivery area after a hasty prep
The interior of my new beast! Lemans blue/black with aluminum trim!
Corey, my "backup" salesman congratulating me on my newly bought beast!
Jason
First impressions: my count!
) Your car looks BEAUTIFUL...thats the only word to describe it, have a good time, and treat her right!
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