Chris has got his E28 M5 working - worth a video, surely?
Well, I promised myself I'd get the old soldier going, and here it is!
What is it about this motor car that I find more compelling by the day? The set-square styling, the sensible dimensions, the noise of that straight-six? All of them I suppose.
It was an ECU problem that stopped it, erm, starting, but Mr Klinkert from Tintern Garages pulled the ancient control box apart, repaired the circuit board where it had dried out, fixed the fuel pump and then it rasped into life. Some drop-link bushes saw it through the MOT.
Driving this 26 year-old car highlights the very best and worst of current fast-car-characteristics. Most of it is plain obvious stuff like grip, braking performance and refinement. But the main subjective difference is the way this car makes you extract the speed on offer; modern performance cars with their vast torque offer so much more on-demand performance. If you want to just bolt past a dawdling car, it just happens. In the M5 you have to anticipate.
Once you get the E28 up on its toes, it still feels genuinely quick, but you have to rev the engine, manage the gaps between those five gear ratios and sometimes, just sometimes, allow a bit of slip to maintain engine speed. It's a real pleasure, but in modern cross-country terms, it isn't especially efficient.
Anyhow, as I mentioned in the video, 2012 marks 40 years of BMW M, and even though I can't cover every model, please advise as to which one you'd like to see next.
Your wheel centre can be seen flying off in one of the cornering shots about 1/3rd way through. At least the rest of the car didn't follow it thru the hedge backwards.
Don Palmer loved these too; he showed me how the driver makes all the difference when I turned up in a cerbera speed 6 for a day at brunters with him.
Which is a segue onto what other m-cars. Z3Mcoupe please. TVR with a BMW badge. Had 2 of them. Was carjacked in the first. Ah the memories!
I do quiet like the E34 as well though, it must be said. I think Chris called his "Bork Factor One" once, in reference to how much went wrong and how much money it cost him.
Fantastic video. An impossibly exciting car to me as a kid. I'd go to the classifieds right now but I know they're out of reach for me as a toy now. Ho hum.
