When we pulled into the local BMW dealer’s lot, the deputy sher­iff pointed us to the right, with all the enthu­si­asm of a cigar store Indian, indi­cat­ing where we should park. We exited the Miata and made our way over to the big tent to fill out the registration/waiver form and get our hand stamped. Some­one offered up free fried chicken, but we declined hav­ing just had a big ol’ salad at Chik-Fil-A on the way over. We had pre­reg­is­tered online to drive a 3 Series con­vert­ible, a Z4 and a 6 Series con­vert­ible in that order. After they checked off our names from the online reg­is­tra­tion sheet, they asked if we didn’t mind dri­ving the 6 Series con­vert­ible first as they had one sitting.

I had reserved a 630i, but that is really last year’s model, this was a 650i with the 360hp V-8. List base price is $78,800. Out­fit­ted, as all these cars are, with sev­eral options that prob­a­bly bump up the price by around another 5 large. It was mist­ing lightly, so we prob­a­bly wouldn’t drop the top, but asked how to do it just in case the sun came out. The fel­low plac­ing us in the car asked what kind of music we wanted and we told him none, so he told me how to turn off the radio. Mmmm, big comfy car and nicely appointed inside, this is how the other half lives. We left Tay­lor BMW’s lot and turned right on Wash­ing­ton Rd. Maybe a ¼ of mile later the loop turns right on Pleas­ant Home Rd. When we turned there was a freight train inch­ing along per­pen­dic­u­lar to us. Dang, hurry up and wait. It wasn’t really mist­ing any more, so I held down the power top lower but­ton and waited while it did its dance. First the front win­dows went down a cou­ple inches, and then the header unlatched. The hard metal boot whirred up 90 degrees and the can­vas folded, flipped and flopped back into the well. The hard boot low­ered itself down shut. Took about a minute to com­plete the cycle. See­ing as the train hadn’t really moved in that time I did a u-turn, turned right on Wash­ing­ton Road and went up to the next right to get onto River­watch Park­way head­ing into down­town Augusta. Step on the gas and the big car squirts to a nice cruis­ing speed of 70MPH. At that speed, with today’s chilly temps, the wind slap­ping you around is a bit much even with the seat heaters on, so I raised all the win­dows. I don’t remem­ber if it went up because I raised all the win­dows or what, but the ver­ti­cal back glass of the con­vert­ible top was now up too to act as a wind block. Unfor­tu­nately there is too much open space between it and the rear win­dows to keep the cold air from hit­ting you in the front. When we got to 15th Street the loop makes a left and then left again back onto River­watch to return to the dealer. About halfway back it was cold enough that I thought of maybe stop­ping after one loop and putting the top up. Not too much fur­ther up the road it started to rain. Did I men­tion the auto­matic rain sens­ing wipers? Our prep guy turned them on at the start and sure enough when the win­dow got wet the wipers reached right up and flicked the drops off just like a horse’s tail rids the ani­mal of flies. By the time we get to Fury’s Ferry Road and our exit from River­watch Park­way the rain is com­ing down pretty hard. We catch a red light, so I put it park and hold down the raise roof but­ton. It took about the same amount of time to go up as it did down, but while rain­drops are plop­ping on your head, it sure seems longer. For what ever rea­son the auto­matic cycle low­ers the front win­dows to put the top up, but it neglects to raise them back up once the top is locked in the up position.

Safely inside and now a bit warmer we decide to drive right by the dealer and do another loop. Hey let’s turn on the radio. I get it back on, but it is Sir­ius satel­lite radio and what­ever chan­nel the last folks had it on is very dis­pleas­ing to our ears. We now find out why we were asked in the begin­ning what kind of music we wanted; this car has a ver­sion of the infa­mous I-Drive. Nei­ther Donna nor I can fig­ure out how to access the radio menu to change a sta­tion. Finally I notice a cou­ple of but­tons near the on/off knob with arrows on them, thank good­ness, seek but­tons. After hit­ting them sev­eral hun­dred times we find some­thing we can tol­er­ate. Must be some kind of sur­round sound radio too as it seems like a lot of ambi­ence is being gen­er­ated by the rear speak­ers. Duh, about 3 miles later I real­ize that not only didn’t the side win­dows go back up auto­mat­i­cally with the top, but nei­ther did the back glass. That “ambiance” was road noise com­ing in through the open win­dow. Now that we have finally got­ten every­thing back in it’s place and are com­fort­able, we take the car for another loop.

After three 15 mile loops in the big con­vert­ible, we get back and ask for a Z4. List base price $41,100. This time it is not rain­ing so we put the top down before we even start. This is a lit­tle more like it, no I-Drive, just reg­u­lar con­trols for radio, heater, etc. The loop starts just like the first, we catch a train at Pleas­ant Home, but the same u-turn trick works this time too. There is no clutch pedal, this car has the Step­tronic Auto­matic Trans­mis­sion, it has lit­tle pad­dle things on the steer­ing wheel, but I can’t seem to make it shift using them, so I give up and just point and shoot. The inte­rior is about 1.25 Miata inte­ri­ors in size and a lit­tle more bath­tubby feel­ing. We just can’t seem to find a com­fort­able way to hold hands while we cruise. Plus even with the win­dows up it is chilly inside the cock­pit, but just to me. Donna is sit­ting low enough that she doesn’t feel the cold air pour­ing in from the back, I am get­ting a stream of air right in the neck, this car really needs some sort of wind blocker back there. After just one lap we turn it in for some­thing else.

Donna wants a ride in the big SUV, so next up is an X5 4.4i. List base price, $53,600. Step­ping up into the vehi­cle gets you a nice view of the road in front of you. Another very comfy inte­rior. No I-Drive, but lots of lit­tle but­tons on the dash with odd pic­tograms that look alike. I don’t even remem­ber if we turned on the radio in this one. It has a giant sun­roof and we imme­di­ately try to fig­ure out which but­ton oper­ates it. Noth­ing on the dash looks promis­ing, but there in the over­head is another panel with sev­eral knob/switch look­ing things. We can’t see the pic­tures, so we are hit­ting ran­dom things. I man­age to fig­ure that push­ing back on a switch slides the sun­shade back into the roof expos­ing the glass. Donna hits a but­ton marked SOS and the radio shuts off and the sound of a dial tone fills the cock­pit. Hmm? A com­puter gen­er­ated voice then asks if we would like to com­plete our call to the BMW Assist Cen­ter, enter a test mode or end the call by say­ing good­bye. Uh-oh. Donna shouts bye! Which it doesn’t under­stand, so I pipe in with good­bye, but too late, we enter another level of who knows what. Now we are push­ing more but­tons in the ceil­ing, when finally again we get asked if we want to end our call, we both shout GOODBYE simul­ta­ne­ously and the com­puter voice says, “Thank you. Good­bye.” Wheew. The radio comes back on and our pulse rates return to nor­mal. I guess SOS had a dif­fer­ent mean­ing besides Sim­ply Open Sun­roof? Donna then dis­cov­ers how to really open the sun­roof at the next light. When the light turns green, Brian hits the gas and accel­er­ates to the nor­mal Ulti­mate Drive cruis­ing speed of 70 PH. Just as we are pass­ing 60 MPH it sounds like a heli­copter is about to land on the roof of the X5. Donna quickly closes the sun­roof and the heli­copter goes away. We must have done some­thing wrong there; no way would the sun­roof of a $50k vehi­cle make that kind of noise. The one on our late 80’s Honda Pre­lude was library quiet to well over 60MPH. Even though it does ride and go like a big-engined BMW should, it is still a tall vehi­cle and the sweep­ing curves of the River­watch Park­way makes it show some wal­lowy han­dling. It does ride so smoothly that we take two 15-mile laps in it. When we get back to the dealer I park it way on the end away from every­thing because I’m not too sure if I can fit it in between 2 other cars in a nor­mal park­ing spot.

For this time out I want some­thing a lit­tle smaller and sure enough there is a new 330i unoc­cu­pied with our name on it. List base price $36,600. I have always liked the looks of the 3-Series BMWs and in spite of the slight Ban­gliza­tion and this ones gray & pink color scheme, I lik­ing the looks of this too. It has so far the nicest seat of any­thing we have been in so far. The steer­ing wheel is just fat enough with bumps and spokes in just the right places. I could see me in one of these as an OTM. The accel­er­a­tion is pretty good too. Not as good as the big V-8s of the X5 & 650i, but bet­ter than the Z4. By now after­noon traf­fic is pick­ing up and we have been dri­ving in cir­cles for more than two hours, so we decide that one 15 mile lap in this car is enough and we think we’ll call it quits.

When we get back to the dealer Domi­noes has deliv­ered a bunch of piz­zas in our absence. Donna and I split a piece. Even though it is chain pizza, in the chilly after­noon it tastes warm and deli­cious. We split a sec­ond piece. We spit an bot­tle of water. For­ti­fied we decide to go for another loop. A 750i sits neglected and alone. A help­ful vol­un­teer puts in it. He says you’re going to like this ride. He has to show us where the seat con­trols are because instead of on the side of the seat like every other BMW the one in the 7-Series are on the con­sole. Next he shows me the gearshift. Good thing too, because unlike the rest of the BMWs this looks like a lit­tle mail­box flag stick­ing off the steer­ing col­umn. Pull for­ward and push down for drive, pull for­ward and push up for reverse and slide but­ton for park. The dreaded I-Drive is right there in the cen­ter con­sole, but we’re lucky as the satel­lite radio is already on the reg­gae chan­nel, so we prob­a­bly won’t need to use it. He says have fun and closes the door. I get the gear shifted into drive first try and ease on the gas. Noth­ing. The park­ing brake must be on. There is no han­dle in the cen­ter con­sole, no foot pedal, no han­dle down and to the left. Hmmm. Wait, there is a but­ton on the left side of the dash with a big P in the mid­dle. Push it and away we go. BMW USA HQ must be in New Jer­sey because all the cars have Jer­sey plates on them and I feel a lit­tle like Tony Soprano as I pull out onto Wash­ing­ton Road and head for the first turn, all that is miss­ing is the cigar. As we start down River­watch Park­way I start to feel like Tony when he gets an anx­i­ety attack. The driver’s seat is mov­ing under­neath me. First one cheek raises, then the other. Then the front of one side goes up and the other down. Whoa, what the heck is going on, must be some sort of mas­sage set­ting in the seat. Donna then spends the next 6 miles try­ing to work the I-Drive knob to get it to shut off and keep me from squeal­ing every time the mas­sage action hits. No luck. At the halfway point of the loop when I get pointed back at the dealer’s lot I floor the car and before Donna can say, “How fast are you going?” we are at triple digit speeds. I lift off the throt­tle and ease back down to a more sedate 80MPH. Awe­some. It hap­pened very fast and the car really didn’t feel like it was work­ing to get there. Plus once there, it felt a lot like 40 MPH, except for the visual Doppler shift of the scenery as it blurred rearwards.

We parked the 750i after just one lap. We had dri­ven 120 miles in 5 dif­fer­ent cars in less than 3 hours and had had enough. The only thing left to do was go inside the show­room, take a sharpie marker and auto­graph this year’s sig­na­ture car, a 330i.

This was the third time Donna and I have par­tic­i­pated in this fun event for a good cause. I try and talk every­one I see into doing this and I can’t for the life of fig­ure out why no one else ever does it. You get to drive some high zoot auto­mo­biles, there are always refresh­ments and BMW donates $1 to help fight breast can­cer for every mile you drive. It is a win-win sit­u­a­tion. Sign up. You won’t regret it. Go to the web­site or call the toll free phone num­ber (1–877-4-A-DRIVE ) and register.