You can't escape BMW Week, you can only hope to contain it. When people ask me if I liked living in San Francisco I say, "No." When pressed, I will admit that I miss the burritos (El Farolito and Cancun FTW!). When pressed even more, I'll cop to loving that there were more BMW 2002s on the streets than there were krusty, homeless, single-issue, performance artists. Kidding on that last bit, but there were an awful lot of two ought-ought twos to be ogled. No big surprise that when I walked out to get my morning... whatever it is I get on Saturdays, I was STOKED to see this gray-skinned beauty. Even better, she belongs to my neighbor and he let me open her up and shoot away. It's a project car that he doesn't have time for (his insanely great sounding, blue-printed 1966 Mustang 289 is quite demanding) so he's had the little Bimmer in storage for the last few years.
Look how clean this guy is. Stee-rait, totally straight. Even the chrome is fab. Only in California. And you could park your Vespa on that back bumper.
Mick Dundee Impression: "You call that a Malaise Era bumper? This is a Malaise Era bumper." Crikey. And another thing, what is with that indicator light?
Need another reason to love this 2002? Feast your eyes on the tiller. Man, I want to lick that wood. What? I'm weird. And I'll lick the near perfect leather, too.
The engine is clean, but (surprise) leaks oil. And the sunroof (bigger surprise) leaks water. In fact, I've yet to meet a 2002 that doesn't leak water through the roof. We love that back in the day German makers would stamp their logo (Hi VW!) on every single engine component. I mean, they even stuck the roundel on top of the carb cover. So very, very cool.
Anybody left unbowed enough to argue that the new 3-Series is somehow good looking? We're smitten with this little sucker. Though, the bumper has to go.
Una mas para la caretera. Oh, also, it's for sale. $4,000. E-mail if you're interested.