In case you’re right here on BMBWLOG, there’s a very good probability that you just’re slightly bit extra within the model than the standard motorist. You won’t be a automobile fanatic within the sense that you just’re getting your arms soiled every day and swapping motors in your yard. However, you most likely care about what you drive — and what you drive would possibly occur to be a BMW. Why you’re in a BMW may be a protracted story. However for me, it’s simple to recollect why I really like the model. I simply recall my first drive in a BMW.
The First BMW Drive: One You By no means Overlook?


The primary expertise I had with any BMW was going to purchase my very own. After years of enthusiasm surrounding largely American automobiles just like the Camaro and Corvette, I’d seen and fallen in love with an E46 M3 (Silver Grey metallic, paint code A08, a Competitors Package deal automobile) whereas working in New York within the late 2000s. That’s when the floodgates opened and I vowed to get my arms on a BMW. Upon studying some chassis codes and discovering an E46 M3 to be wildly outdoors my price range, I began looking for E36s.
I discovered somebody promoting a black/black 325is that was pretty clear, and went over for a check drive. Sadly, it was an automated automobile — probably the explanation it was completely filth low-cost — but it surely hardly mattered. In spite of everything, I couldn’t even drive a handbook on the time. The throaty inline six (aided by an exhaust that may by no means cross PA state inspection), comfy seats, and extremely balanced steering bought me within the first thirty seconds. I had no thought automobiles might really feel like this; it was my introduction to how the Germans do it. And I used to be transformed for all times. Home windows down, music up, sunroof tilted; this automobile was the enterprise.
The drive residence — by some pleasant rural Jersey roads — bolstered my perception that I had really made an awesome resolution by shopping for this automobile I had no enterprise driving. I had at all times loved driving. However driving the E36 felt like the expertise, quite than simply part of it. Extremely, regardless of an automated trans that was on its method out and quite a few different questionable modifications made by the prior proprietor, that automobile proved useless dependable for the 12 months or so I had it. And it led to like affair that continues to at the present time. With your complete model, in fact, however particular to the E36, too.
Different Folks Have Nice First BMW Tales, Too
Writing and being passionate about BMWs is, in some methods, the simplest factor on the planet. The model itself does quite a lot of the heavy lifting. The title carries an intangible weightiness with it, a lot in order that even non-enthusiasts usually appear to have a “first drive in a BMW” story when prodded. In a single case it’s a drop-top Z3 that their mom purchased once they had been barely sufficiently old to even know what a automobile was.
One other, a long-departed grandfather that leased a brand new 7 Sequence religiously, a behavior that ultimately turned a personality trait inextricable from the person’s different many redeeming qualities. However these first rides people have shared with me previously by some means made an enduring, enduring impression. A lot that they fondly keep in mind the drive typically as a lot as twenty years later.
Whether or not you had been driving, using shotgun, or stuffed within the trunk, it’s probably that your first time in a BMW is an event you haven’t forgotten. It’s equally possible that, in the event you drive a BMW in the present day, your first BMW journey laid that basis way back. It could even be the explanation you’re right here on BMWBLOG! We’d love to listen to how your first drive went — and what about it ensnared you because it did us.