Just A Kid

As always when the BMW Ultimate Drive comes to town I try to talk everyone I know into participating. So far with my co-workers I have had limited success, but with the fellow MMC members I have had better luck.

This year I had almost talked one of our young engineers into doing it. He was on the fence until I mentioned that they had an M3 Coupe in the line up, then he started leaning. He currently drives a tarted up Lexus IS250 with inspirations of turbo charging it.

When Donna and I left work on Monday he said call him if they had the M3 available and he would seriously consider taking a half day off. When we saw the M3 sitting there in the morning I gave him a call, he said he would be there in the afternoon. Because it was just sitting there waiting, Donna and I took our first loop in it. A couple of miles into our loop and having listened to the sound coming from the exhaust pipes when mainlining bursts of acceleration I told Donna to call Ian’s work phone. I wanted to seal the deal and make sure he came over by having her hold the phone out the window when I punched it. He must have been working because he didn’t pick up.

Turns out he didn’t need that sound incentive because up he drove at about 12:45. At that point the Survivor Drive was in progress so there were no cars to drive. I told him to park and go inside to register. At that point of the day it was taking a while to register, so it took about 20 minutes before he showed up back outside. He had a disappointed look on his face, turns out you have to be 30 years old to drive the M3. He wasn’t to badly hurt because he had lined up a round of golf for later that afternoon, so he just got there early and hit a bucket of balls before playing.

I think Donna and I felt worse about it than he did. I didn’t think anything of it when I asked him to come drive. I thought there might be a 25 year-old age limit on the 6 & 7 Series cars, but I didn’t know about the extra 5 years needed for the M3 Coupe. Because he is so mature acting I thought he was in his upper 20’s, but as it turns out Ian isn’t even old enough to drive the 6s or 7s. He is only 23.