Love Letters to My Cars - part three: My 2nd love - BM-TROUBLE-YOU!

Good Heavens but it's been a long time since I did a car post! 7 months, to be exact. I suppose I've been putting them off, because, you see, I'm an unusual girl. Each one of my cars was equally and intimately special to me, and like a large number of my previous relationships, left me with ENORMOUS PTSD 🤣

This glorious temperamental speed-queen was certainly no exception and was quite possibly the absolute worst (and best)of the lot.

Now wait a minute.

This car, in its HeyDay, and if extremely well looked after, is ONE HELL of a ride. Moving up from my Renault 11TS (read this story if you haven't already) which was my 1st car, was one hell of a jump. Like going from a land speeder to flying the Millennium Falcon and good GOD was it GLORIOUS.

I'm actually so chuffed I found this image, as it's even the same colour as my burgundy beast. In a time before camera phones, I'm afraid I don't even have a single photo of her. I do know that this is the 318i. Mine was the 320i and the bumpers were 100% pure metal. None of this pansy black trim stuff. I can't seem to find an image of one anywhere... that is exactly like mine.

0-100 in lightning speed (10 seconds flat) and power not unlike a V8: which made her a wheelspinning GODESS, this miraculously gorgeous beast was everything little Claire had dreamed of when she was counting cars on the side of the road instead of playing with the kids in the park.

I remember the 1st day I got her. I bought her from the family of an old lady, who had had it from new, and had recently passed away. The interior was spectacular and full of luxuries I could never have imagined (aside from a functioning demister, no need for a throttle so it wouldn't cut out on me in the mornings and no extra fan switch to stop it from overheating in traffic). It had a factory installed sound, which even though it was a cassette player, was sound barrier breaking stuff. The automatic transmission was quite something to get used to and it took me a while for my left foot to stop searching for the clutch.

The chrome bumpers meant no one could mess with me, or drive up my backside.

I remember that indescribable thrill of the BMW badge on the bonnet and on the steering wheel. I finally had her. My dream car. She turned out to be from my nightmares though!
 
Ok, so, 6 weeks after I got her, she started cutting out horribly and smoking like crazy. I called her a mobile night club because of all the noises and that she was a moving smoke machine. The engine blew after just two months of ownership. WTF? How?

So, the people who we had bought the car from, who were family friends, eventually wrangled the story from their young sons, and they had apparently been joyriding granny's car after she died and they basically drove it into the ground. Lucky me, I was part of a family of car people who owned their own workshop, which meant a full engine rebuild was "on the house." I found out later, that cars are horribly expensive to maintain. Especially BMWs which is why I will probably never buy another one (even though I am still eyeing that iconic Z3).

After that there were numerous other problems, like the computer chip (WTF car from the 80's has a computer chip) that somehow got bent and malfunctioned while I was in the fast lane on a 5 lane freeway to the airport. That was exciting. It completely cut out at 120kmph and I had to drift over to the emergency lane, which was four lanes away, without hitting anything. I broke down in quite possibly the most awful place for a 20 year old blond poppie (colloquial for doll), basically on the outskirts of Gang Land. Two police vehicles drove right past me. In fact, the only people that stopped to assist me were a bunch of old ladies in a Toyota on their way to a bowls tournament. Luckily I'm not THAT old and the years of mobile phones were upon us (barely), so eventually, my rescue did arrive. The temporary fix was to fold a cigarrette box lid up and squish it into place so that it would hold the stupid chip in place for me to drive the car back to the workshop.

After that she redeemed herself by saving my life. Driving home, very late at night and in the pouring rain, I almost missed my turnoff. In a bid to still make it, I attempted to break and turn, which send us both into a flat spin. I literally just took my hands off the steering wheel, removed my feet from the pedals and remembered my Jedi car driving training. Once the car had regained traction I managed to steer her onto the island in the middle of the road, missing a massive tree by the skin of my teeth.

She and her chrome bumpers got me into and out of a lot of trouble though.

At one stage, I was trying to sell her, and had a for sale sign in the back window (yes, this was before Gumtree, or basically any e-commerce). I was driving down the road and noticed a very handsom man staring at me. I thought we somehow made eye contact, while loooking at him in my rearview mirror and when I looked back at the road, I noticesd the traffic light changing and came to a stop. He did not see the light change or me breaking, and proceeded to slam into the back of my car. Blushing profusely, I pulled over so we could check for damage and trade phone numbers, etc. I got out of the car to find this poor young man in a bulbbering mess. He had just spend R20 000.00 suping up his car for drag racing and had fins and all kinds of extra custom stuff. His car looked like something out of Fast and The Furious, but all plastic. The poor thing now looked like a horribly disfigured concertina. He was apparently reading my "For Sale " sign, (not making eyes at me) and not paying attention to the road when he hit me from behind. He was absolutely terrified he'd hurt me or damaged my car. I walked around to the back of my car, licked my finger and rubbed some white paint off my bumper, and well, that was it. At this point, I left him to cry on the side of the road, realizing that it was probably not the best moment to ask for his number.

While working as a debt collector in Wineberg (A very old suburb in Cape Town with extremely narrow roads) I found myself completely parked in. It had been a long day of being shouted at and I had zero patients. I was able to "move" the car in front of me by stepping hard on the gas. Problem solved.

I did love her dearly..... I eventually sold her though, to recover the costs of reversing into an off duty traffic cop when we were both parked on the pavement at a night club. I swear I never felt a thing! I reversed, thought the bump was just me getting off the pavement and proceeded to drive home. The bouncer took my licence plate number and the next thing I knew, there was a warrant out for my arrest for a hit and run! Omg. Apparently, I had bashed in this guys passenger door and inadvertently caused R10 000.00 (USD 600) worth of damage to his stupid plastic car. He was actually very nice and dropped all charges as soon as I made contact.

In the end, I managed to sell her to a posh older lady who had sentimental attachments to the make and model as it was her 1st car, and I managed to sell it for almost double the amount I'd paid for it to start with...... I never did see her again, although.... I do still sometimes search for her in the traffic.... she's still in my heart... and comes to visit me in my dreams. They all do, but she was really special💔

All Images Sourced From Ultimate Specs