I paid eight dollars for an AutoCheck report and ran the M3's VIN. It hadn't been in any accidents and was originally registered in the Hamptons, which meant it was driven by a rich person who took good care of it--or by a rich person's spoiled progeny who regularly drove it into swimming pools while snorting cocaine off the dashboard. I crossed my fingers, hoped for the former, and put in a bid.
I won it for the reserve price, and for Honda Accord money, I was now the future owner of one of Germany's finest automobiles, circa 1998. I headed to Springfield to pick up this car that I was legally obligated to purchase but had never seen in person. Since I'd read all about the M3, I knew exactly what to expect from the engine: nothing less than nuclear-bomb power, delivered with the velvet purr of a hundred tiger cubs licking butter from a sheet of glass. I knew the steering would have so much feedback that if I ran over a nail I would need a tetanus shot.
The owner, a beefy, shirtless fellow who demonstrated his Saleen by starting it up and immediately redlining it in neutral ("Ha! You didn't do that to the M3, right? Ha. Ha. Ha."), handed me the keys, and I tentatively climbed aboard and prepared for undiluted driving bliss. My impressions, in order: "These seats are as good as they look. If scientists should develop an immortality pill, I shall keep my M3 until the sun grows cold and the earth is but a barren rock hurtling through lifeless space!" Second, "Did vandals steal the chassis reinforcements? The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge had better structural rigidity than this." And third, "Wow, great power up to 4500 rpm! At which point, the engine apparently morphs into a Singer sewing machine."
At first blush, 1998 doesn't seem like that long ago, but when you stop to think about it, eight years ago Bill Clinton was president and Eagle-Eye Cherry got regular radio airplay. Eight years ago, people paid $46,470 for 240 horsepower. Thanks to evolutionary styling changes from the E36 to the E46, onlookers sometimes mistake this car for new, but damning evidence to the contrary lies in the glove box, where I discovered a "BMW New Owner Audio Program." It's on a cassette tape.
Today, my old M3 is handily outpowered by the likes of the Honda Accord Hybrid and the Hyundai Azera. That's pathetic. So I've learned to take pleasure in the subtleties. The way the grips at ten and two o'clock on the steering wheel have slight indentations to accommodate your thumb, for instance, or how the wheels, puny by current standards at seventeen inches, nonetheless hunker under the fenders in a butch stance. You wish for a six-speed transmission not because the engine needs it but because that stubby little shifter is so light and smooth you'd like one more opportunity to change gears. And thanks to its 50/50 weight distribution and a set of Vredestein Wintracs on 1995 M3 rims (another eBay find), this rear-wheel-drive droptop is much fun in the snow.
Sure, the current M3 will whup my car. The upcoming V-8-powered M3 will rip its wheels off and stuff them up its tailpipe. But rather than dwell on the superiority of the future I can't afford, I prefer to live in the past. Pretending it's 1998 is free. So when the sun is shining and Will Smith is blasting, I flip open my Motorola StarTac and yell "Whassup!" over the roar of my mighty 240-hp M3, the baddest car on my street.