see also: Exotic car month

So after thinking about it for a month, I bought the BMW M3. I took it to the man for the smog check, where I was a little relieved that it passed with no trouble at all. (There's no reason it wouldn't, but with all the engine modifications, who knows.) Then I took it to the other man and paid more taxes and fees, including the last 6 months of overdue registration since the previous owner had not renewed it, which was annoying.

While I was at these places, it was confirmed that I am now in the cool car club. The guy who did the smog was very pleased with all the engine work and performance parts that he got to enumerate on the smog inspection, and hung around for a while afterwards talking about how supercharged this is better than turbo-ed that, and how much used M3s cost, and how many meals his wife and baby would have to miss for him to buy one, and so on. Then the same thing happened with the guy at the DMV when he saw what I was registering, and we talked for a while about how much his 5-series is worth (a lot), and how many meals he could buy for his wife and baby if he sold it, and so on. It was kind of like after I cut my hair off and found out I was now in the no hair club, in which random guys will strike up conversations about the benefits of hairlessness and hair cutting techniques and such.

Anyway, I left the DMV with what I can hope is a completely normal and proper registration card (a feat that took six years for the last car). And today in the mail I received my first one of these:

Being in the cool car club, my car will need to have its own web page, because that's one of the responsibilities that comes with membership. So I took pictures in my driveway, which will have to do until I have bad-ass action shots from the track, or at least autocross:

	The M3 badge makes +5hp
Chicks dig the VDO gauges. (Seriously.)	Observe the racing harnesses and fire extinguisher, which are totally necessary and not at all for showing off.

I won't be able to list all the modifications from stock because I'm sure there is stuff I don't know about yet, but here is some of the important stuff: Dinan supercharger, free flow exhaust, and stage 3 suspension kit (shocks, springs, struts, anti-roll bars, and camber plates). BBS 18 inch wheels fitted at 225/40/R18 in the front and 245/35/R18 in the rear. AP Racing brake kit. In this configuration the car should make about 340hp, for 0-60 in 4.7 seconds, and a top speed of about 157mph. I haven't tested any of these things myself, yet.

In other news, if you want to buy a low miles, compulsively maintained 2001 Nissan Sentra, I know where you can get one...

10 Apr 2007 01:23 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments