Cars are an emotional subject for most of us PHers. We allow our hearts to overrule our heads, and so we should! Why else would any sane man buy a TVR Griffith 500? [Playing with fire there Dale... - Ed.] And how else could Alfa Romeo justify building the new 4C?
It was true love in the case of the DIY Eunos
I love cars that are an extension of my own emotions. To this day my favourite ever project car was my little 1990 Eunos Roadster, complete with eBay turbocharger and homebuilt Megasquirt ECU. Oddly, the little 220hp rocket remains the fastest car I've ever owned with 100 per cent of my own cash too. It was the little car that could. It was the underdog. Nobody expected it to be fast, but it really was.
I loved that little MX-5 because I took it from being a typical owners-club, Sunday morning car to being (in my own head, at least) a Nurburgring legend. See this video from my friend's Corvette for proof of how much fun this car really was.
I only sold it, genuine man-tears in my eyes, for the red, chainsaw shrieking, rotary-engined RX-8. A car that was a little bigger than the MX-5, had a little more potential, but was ultimately flawed. When I sold the motor-less carcass for pennies, I was quite emotional again.
And even the doomed RX-8 replacement
But why am I talking so much about a couple of Mazdas that I sold years ago? Because they were emotional. I loved those cars. Even the stupid, rotary one that blew its apex seals and ate its own internals. And do you know how emotional I was about selling the BMW? I was more worried about the money I'd put in to it than the actual emotional link between myself and the car.
Maybe I'm getting older and more detached, but the fact remains that my heart still skips a beat thinking of the turbo-lag-to-boost moments in my blue and silver MX-5. My palms sweat when I remember the sound of my red RX-8, flat-out down Dottinger Hohe, drafting a Scirocco and getting overtaken by the R26.R into Tiergarten .
And the silver BMW? Month by month, over the last two years, I transformed her from daily hack to dedicated 'ring tool. Handling? Excellently superlative after Spires fitted the Nitrons. Braking? Wondrous; I settled on Hawk DTC70s with ATE Power Discs and they're perfect. Reliability? Yes, I changed a lot of auxiliary parts such as the power-steering pump, alternator and even a clutch. The LSD whines and the rust is spreading too, but it still trumps the two Mazdas in the reliability-on-track stakes. On paper, this was a great car.
BMW remained more a business relationship
I had some fun times too. Taking my mum for a lap of Donington. Thrashing around Circuit Zolder after dark. Drifting the Nordschleife on a cold and wet winter's day. Gatecrashing VLN practice. Racing my boss's E30 318is. You can watch all of them
here
And yet, even as I write those things down, I don't actually miss the silver BMW. It was less of a loyal pet to me, and more of a useful tool. Ultimately, I can't explain exactly why I never formed an emotional link to the E36. Not through lack of working on it, nor through lack of fun times driving it. It did exactly what I wanted it to do.
But when the time came to free up some more funds for VLN racing, I only got emotional about my lack of personal track car, but not about the actual car itself. And that says it all.
Fact sheet
Car: 1997 BMW 328i SE
Run by: Dale Lomas
Bought: September 2012
Purchase price: £950
Last month at a glance: Sold!