Boy, Is My Left Foot Bored

We drove a ton of BMWs today and not a sin­gle one had a man­ual trans­mis­sion. One of the work­ers said they quit a cou­ple years ago because they were burn­ing up too many clutches…

It is prob­a­bly eas­ier to name the mod­els I didn’t drive (6 series con­vert­ible, 5 series wagon & a 3 series 4-door), but let me list the ones I drove and the order we drove them before I forget.

1. Z4 Coupe
2. 335i Con­vert­ible (the new hard­top model)
3. X3
4. 550i Sedan
5. X5
6. 750 Li
7. 335i Coupe
8. 650i Coupe
9. Z4 Road­ster

Because the BMW dealer had moved a cou­ple miles fur­ther out on Wash­ing­ton Rd we had a whole new loop this year. It was a mile shorter than the pre­vi­ous one at 14 miles and a lit­tle more sub­ur­ban. It wasn’t too bad until school let out as it passed three dif­fer­ent insti­tutes of edu­ca­tion. Maybe because it was a nicer day than last year, there seemed to be a lot more folks out dri­ving today, so we didn’t do any dou­ble loops. We drove each car once for a total of 125 miles. For you math majors, I know that nine times four­teen would be 126, but a slight nav­i­ga­tional error on the first loop brought us in a mile too soon.

High­lights: The 335i Coupe with enough horse­power to achieve earth orbit if you could get a ramp of the right angle. The 5 series sedan and the X5 had a HUD speed dis­play that hov­ered just above and in front of the hood on the driver’s side.

Low­lights: I-Drive and the abrupt throt­tle response from the drive by wire sys­tem. (I’m sure both of these would turn into high­lights or at least invis­i­ble if I had more than 14 miles to fig­ure them out.)

My nav­i­ga­tor missed a turn call out on the first loop, but I had my own oops moment when we got in the X5. The rep got us in the car, I got it started and he reset the odome­ter and marked down the mileage. He then asked if I had any ques­tions and being as this was our fifth loop and I’d dri­ven aN X5 last year, I said, “Nope.” I hit the win­dow up but­ton, bzzzzzzzit. He walked away and I grabbed the shifter and pulled back to put it in drive, it didn’t move and noth­ing hap­pened. Pushed it for­ward with the same result. Pushed a but­ton on the side and then tried to move the shifter, still noth­ing. Bzzzzzzzit, I hit the down but­ton for the win­dow. “Excuse me,” I say, “Just how do I put this thing in drive?” The nice rep leans in the win­dow and points at the but­ton I pushed ear­lier and said, “Hold that in while pulling back.” “Ahhh,” I said, “I tried each sep­a­rately, but didn’t try the combination.”

Even though we knew there would be food at the BMW dealer, we weren’t sure what and Donna wanted a fish sand­wich, so we stopped at McDonald’s before head­ing over to drive cars. Fillet-O-Fish for her and a South­ern Chicken Sand­wich for me. We split a small drink and fries.

Turns out he food that was avail­able was good, so we had half sand­wiches and wraps with some pasta salad at the end of the day that we called din­ner. The brown­ies were so awe­some I ate two.