Figured I'd go ahead and say hi. I'm Jake, kinda-recent college grad and living in Fairfax. Just got my BMW CCA membership for Christmas (thanks, mom and dad) so hopefully I can get out to some events and meet y'all. Here's how I got to where I am now, in a (somewhat brief) nutshell).
My BMW interest started when I was what, 15 or so. Some family friends worked with my parents to teach me stick. We were going to use their Miata, but the mom had her Z3 out one day and said, "well, why not now? We have the time." So, I learned on a 99 Z3 2.8 and picked it up pretty quickly. Their nickname for the car was "the baby." That Christmas, I got a BMW keyring with a note, entitling me to ten days of "babysitting" while they were out of town. As a newly-licensed junior in high school, this was THE coolest gift.
The Z3 was a British Traditional package. They still have it...
So, I went through high school driving Mom's Ford Escape. The other family let me borrow the Z3 (and their Miata) here and there, too. Got to college and discovered Madison Motorsports. Dove into that, decided I wanted a sports car and ended up buying a '95 Miata. I learned to wrench on it myself, and ended up running MM for two years. That car is slowly becoming very very track oriented. I work and do HPDE with NASA-MA, hoping to get my competition license at some point.
I landed a cool internship last summer, before senior year, and ended up with more money than sense. Seeing as this is the time of my life to be dumb and impulsive, I decided I would buy a "cool" car for less than $1k... hopefully more like $500. Found an '87 BMW 325e in Charlottesville and brought it home for $700. It was Delphin Grey (in some places) and kinda ran like crap, but it was a perfect college beater. I bought it on a Wednesday night, titled it Thursday morning, and by Thursday evening we had spray-painted it. Poorly.
It was such a pile, but I loved running around town in it. Sold it to a motorsports club friend of mine for $550 and it's his only car. Somehow, it still runs. The saga of EtaBaby is here.
I had sold the Eta, was graduating in May, and needed a car that didn't suck to daily drive. A Miata on coilovers is pretty brutal. I had worked on a friend's 1995 525iA during my junior year, and had a soft spot for the E34s. I ended up finding a 1991 535i/5 in Maryland, and bought it from a total sketchball who actually title-jumped the car. I did get in touch with the long-term owner, who had it from 1994 to 2009, and got more info on what repairs he did, why certain dents are where they are, and so on. It has a million miles on it (really, about 195k) and I've replaced a lot of parts to get it to where it is now. It's not perfect, but it's a 5-speed M30 car and pretty fun to wring the motor out.
Thinking I'll keep this one through the spring. I really have a thing for the Technoviolet/Daytona Violet M3's so that's my next move, I think.
There's my (very) long-winded hello... looking forward to meeting you all!
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