Wow...

[jsbowden]

I've burned up over one hundred hours of vacation over the course of the last six months. Good thing I start earning four weeks per annum as of next week, I haven't had less than two weeks vacation sitting there doing nothing in several years now. I'm down to thirty one hours of vacation and twenty four hours of sick leave. Woe is me; whatever shall I do?

robeli and I took a BMW convertable out for a test drive the weekend before last. After taking a test drive, she says she's a majority of the way to being convinced. Excellent.

And yes dear, of course I know you're reading this.

All I can say is holy shit. It drove wonderfully; stuck to the road like it was superglued down, has a nice responsive 235bhp 3.0L inline 6 for an engine, and a 6 speed manual tranny mated up to 18"F/18.5"R low profile tires with big GIANT ventilated rotors on all four (ABS of course) that stop like it was free and corner like being on rails. I'm in lust.

Oh yeah, and the roof disappears at the touch of a button. We had to test drive the M3, as they didn't have any 330ci models with the Performance option and the manual tranny (the engine in the M3 has slightly more power than the straight 330(c)i w/Perf. pkg (and the dual exhaust on the M3 is a little more throaty sounding, but I prefer quieter anyway...the 330i is 225, w/perf is 235, I think the M3 might be 240 or 245 (I was wrong, it's 333bhp), but it's not much different), but not enough that it'll make any real world difference). Anyone who'd buy that car with an automatic transmission deserves to be taken out back and shot.

All the other shit that BMW throws on a car is just icing. There are better performing cars out there, but not with 4 seats and a roof that retracts.

If money didn't matter and I didn't need room for a carseat, I'd hunt down a 1989 930 (911s haven't been 911s internally since the 70s, it's a marketing number these days) Turbo Carrera conv. and ask that nice Mr. Ruf to work his magic. I'd kill for a 911 chassis that did 206mph. and still managed to be street legal, and that's what Ruf does to Porsches.

I love this disc, but I'd make one change to make it really ideal; I'd drop "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word" and put "Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters" on it instead.

Comments

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Those are pseudo automatics. VW called it the automatic stick shift back in 68, and mercifully, not very many were made of that particular type. The concept is the same, though the technology is much better now; it may lack a clutch, but the driver still shifts up and down manually.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Lots of cars offer some variant of that now. Some of them even work well. The version in our hyundai is pretty lame, since it only shifts when it wants to, and your input is an advisory to the transmission computer, not an actual control.
"hello tranny? please shift now?"
"hey driver, get bent, my book says third gear now, no way I'm going to second."
"please? see I'm going a little slower"
"well, wait a second, hmm, ok."

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

You ought to hear Jeremy Clarkson (presenter of Britain's top automobile TV program, not least because they Make Things Go Fast and Blow Things Up and Destroy Things[1]) complain about "flappy-paddle" gear shift. I only heard him be happy with one of those things once, I think that might have been the Aston Martin DB9. All the others, be they Porsches, Ferraris, or what have you, allegedly have too much delay from actuating the switch to the actual gearchange (something the F1 cars do not have).


[1] There was the doubleparter in which they tried to prove that Toyota pickup trucks were indestructible, as evidenced by the fact of them turning up in every bit of footage from wartorn third world countries. The things was driven down stairways, ran down a wall or two, left on the beach as the tide came in (it was eventually found by a fisherman a ways over), incinerated, and left on the top of a 28 story flat as it was being explosively demolished. The chassis broke in half, such that the thing was held together by bodypanels and the driveshaft.. but the engine still went.

This is one of their less crazy stunts.