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Readers’ Rides:
1999 BMW M3
Added on May 23 by nderwater

My fifth BMW after 3 E30’s and a E39, this ‘99 M3 replaces my turbocharged ‘99 Miata. The Miata was the most fun car I’ve driven this side of a Porsche 911, but family obligations and restrictive track event rules lead me to find a car with a both a back seat and a hard top.

The car is a beater (+160K miles, rebuilt title, plenty of shakes rattles & clunks), but pulls hard and only cost me $7,000. Now that I’ve handed daily-driving duty over to the local Xpress Bus, this car will primarily be used for HPDE’s, autocrosses and running errands.

On May 31, I ran the M3 in an autocross with my local BMW club. Sadly enough, it was my first autocross in over seven years. I got six timed runs: 70.2, 68.1, 68.8, 67.8, 67.3, 66.4. I ran mid-pack in my class of 14 (best time was 62.3) and mid-pack in a field of 60 cars (FTD was 58.4). I had a great time at a fun event and got to knock some of the rust off my car control skills. I’ll add the pix to my photobucket album soon.

I ran my second autocross with the local BMW club on June 28. I was pushing harder, so my runs were a less consistent today: 62.5, 64.6, 60.6, 67.7, 58.9, 58.5. The average best time in my class was 58.1, so I was 4/10’s behind the curve. Overall I finished 28 out of 65 entries. Time to replace my bald tires with something sticky! Pix and videos can be found in my photobucket album.

I scored my first points in the August 9 autocross, my third event with the local BMW club. For the first time this season I a missed gate, scoring DNF’s in my first two runs. The rest of my times were competitive, but not stellar: 00:57.7 00:58.0 00:56.1 00:57.3. I was able to put together a great fifth run to score a 56.1 - five tenths and two tenths off the two cars which finished ahead of me in class. In prior events I’ve run as much as four seconds behind these guys. The average best run for my class was 58.4, a time I cleared by over two seconds. Rock on!

Autocross run with BMW club instructor, July 2009: http://vimeo.com/5616852

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