I reactivated my membership yesterday after a long hiatus. My son and I had a ’93 325i in the early 2000’s. Great car! Went to 180K with no real issues, then he sold it to CarMax for $3K. I joined back then.


Hopefully the forum can appreciate my “return”. I am a German car guy. Owned an Opel Manta GT, VW’s of all shapes and sizes, a couple of Mercedes, 6 Porsches, including that '69 911 I should have never sold. I currently have a very nice, modified garage queen 2006 Cayman S in black, with a Cayman R wing, GT3 splitter, plus a bunch of added goodies. It still stops traffic. My sons are both car guys, one is big in the early Audi Ur Quattro world and the other owns a 911, and an X5 diesel among other cars. We work on all of them.


So, a friend of mine with a Porsche Boxster who lived down the street from me moved to Indiana. We worked on cars a bit and I taught him a lot about mid engine Porsches and car stuff in general. So he tells me – hey, I sold my Boxster to CarMax for $6,000. I go WHAT - you did not ask me about that car? I was teasing of course but that set me off on a convertible quest.


I listed the Porsche but after a few interactions with buyers I pulled it off the web. I am keeping it. So I looked for that perfect German small convertible – VW Beetle (too wimpy but kinda cool), the Mini (we had one, terrible reliability), Audi A3/A5 (OK but not a great drive), Fiat Abarth 124 (Italian engine in a Mazda Miata body, start the engine failure countdown), a newer Boxster (I already have it’s cousin) and BMW 3 and 4 series (older ones are generally ragged out, and the ones just seemed to heavy for me). So I almost accidentally found the small Series 2 BMW at a dealer, 9600 miles. First it was sold, then it was back, and I snagged it. It's a 2016 Certified BMW 2 Series 228i xDrive All Wheel Drive Convertible. Triple black, not too loaded. Light, sweet.


I pick it up Friday. I am really pleased!


FYI, the latest issue with the kid’s x5 seems to be the Manifold Absolute Pressure sensor, so we will dig into that this weekend. Might as well clean the MAF, and replace the Exhaust Pressure Sensor while we are “in there.”


I’m glad to be back!