The Thing About Cars and Driving a BMW...

I drive a BMW. There, I said it. It’s out in the open for all to see, hear, interpret and judge. I drive a BMW and being a car guy this can be difficult when talking with people who are not car people and sometimes even with a fellow automotive lover. Whenever the inevitable question of ‘What do you drive?’ arises I am never quite sure what to say. I feel like the old make up commercial with the tag line ‘Don’t judge me because I am beautiful.’ I want to scream, ‘Don’t judge me because I own a BMW.’ In my family we have a matching pair of silver and gold Ford Escapes that my wife and children drive. I could say I drive an Escape but two things plague me. 

First, I am lying because my daily cars are 1974 and 1976 BMW 2002s. 

Second, I want to share my excitement about driving a car that has been around since Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford took over. 

Unfortunately, many of the people I am speaking with not only don’t know who those two Presidents are, they don’t even have a 1970’s birth date.

So why the angst? It’s because I do drive a BMW. You know, those very expensive cars that well tanned, sunglass donning, fitness center going, tennis skirt wearing, Starbuck’s loving people drive. The car that is considered the Ultimate Driving Machine not because it can hold lateral Gs that will make a Lifestyle Lift droop or can take off from a light that muscle cars can only envy. I live in dread because BMW is synonymous with money. BMWs now define giant navigation screens, heated seats, active cruise-control and pretty colors like Mojave Metallic or Orion Silver with Dakota Venetian Beige leather seating. You see a BMW is not only the Ultimate Driving Machine but also the Ultimate Status Machine and, if the term still is in vogue, the Ultimate Yuppie Machine. 

When you own a BMW you have arrived, or at least have debt up to your ears. You live in the neighborhood that requires a certain type of bark mulch and your neighborhood meetings discuss how the new family, that doesn’t know any better, actually left their four garbage cans by the edge of the driveway until noon not one week, but two weeks in a row. When you own the Ultimate Driving Machine you are often assumed to be the Ultimate Snob. 

As humans, we, including me, do often judge a book by its cover, name or anything else we can use to put any item into a recognized category.

But I am not rich, live in a fancy neighborhood, play tennis or even belong to a gym. I just love cars! The more simple the better and my cars are

not only cute but are the definition of simple. They don't have power windows, door locks, not even power steering. In regards to air conditioning, officially one has it. Heated seats? On a 100 degree day in my home state of Alabama my vinyl seats puts the best heated seats that Sweden can offer to shame. NVH materials? Who in the world knows that that means but if hard vinyl, non-supportive seats and enough road and wind noise that requires you to carry a bullhorn to talk to your passengers represent the best of NVH, then my cars are Motor Trend’s Best in Class. A classic BMW is as much an Ultimate Driving machine as any of the multiple hundred horsepower, 22” wheel wearing, safety loaded cars that BMW produces today just done in a different package. My old cars hearken back to a more simple time, at least in car design, where you could feel the road and it required full-time attention to keep your car in the center of the lane. 

A time when sound proofing consisted of buying

 better speakers and a great aftermarket stereo. In short, a time when a car was, well, I don’t know, a car.

Overtime I have slowly become more comfortable with owning my little white vintage automobile. Now when I am asked what do I drive I will reply, with still some hesitancy in my voice, ‘I drive a BMW’. I wait for the look of ‘Oh yes, I should have guessed’. Once that look is over I follow up with ‘It is not the BMW you are thinking of’ and I go on to explain what my car is like. It is then that the non-car person and I can engage in a conversation. 

Whether the person drives a Toyota Yaris, a Mercedes CLK Black or something in between the discussion of what it is like to own and drive a 38 year old Ultimate Driving Machine is interesting to almost anyone. Most people will say ‘My uncle owned one of them, he loved it.’ My hope is to educate? to enlighten? to make interesting to? the non-car person to help him or her better understand that a car is more than a piece of transportation, or an accessory, but it is often part of a heritage that has been built on cars, and people, from the past. Maybe the car 

they are driving now represents the heritage of cars yet to be built. My ultimate hope is that maybe, just maybe, to convince that person to not simply judge someone by the name of the car they own but instead about what that person knows about the name of their car.

That’s the thing about cars…the name is just part of the car…and the owner…