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Roadrash said:
Wow! Beautiful car and it was a wise investment!
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Thankyou, Roadrash for that very nice compliment about my overly priced German sports car conveyance.

2 firsts : First non-domestic vehicle purchase, and the most frivolous performance designed, pricy & non practical vehicle consideration gift to myself 1 yr. after I retired from public audio electronic equipment servicing.
2nd: new vehicle purchase in my life.

Don`t know about the investment aspect, just wanted a performance sport car of some type before I turned 50.

The 1987 recently fully restored at the time the picture was taken Chevy Astro van in the background was my first new vehicle purchase ever.
 
Bill Ferris said:
Don`t know about the investment aspect, just wanted a performance sport car of some type before I turned 50.
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Thats a very special car,and they're bringing special money. You could more than likely make a nice profit after owning it all these years.
 
Roadrash said:
Thats a very special car,and they're bringing special money. You could more than likely make a nice profit after owning it all these years.
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That`s what I`ve come to understand, Roadrash..
But that`s never been in my plans for when originally purchasing the car, and only found out some time later about it after I purchased it..
I was originally looking to buy a new Mecedes Benz 500 AMG Roadster, but in the mid summer of 2003, my local dealer advised me that there was a 2 yr. waiting list !
And my friend, when he called me to see if I had purchased it, when I told him the car wasn`t locally available, he suggested that I might be interested in BMW`s similar Roadster version, as he worked for the nearby Jacksonville FL. BMW dealership body shop..
So that`s how this purchase came about, with no research, consideration, or prior knowledge that such a model existed..

Just looked at the non-Alpina Z8 in the showroom, and decided the special order Alpina would suffice, still not knowing that it was a numbered limited run kind of special vehicle..
I purposely hadn`t brought my check book, or credit card with me, so once I decided to go for it I just told the sales lady that I would call her from home with my credit card # for a $2,000.00 deposit so they dealership could put in the order for it to be built over in Germany.
I was so freaked out after it arrived that I wouldn`t let the dealership have somebody drive it to fill the car up and was not going to myself either during the ~ 5:00 PM afternoon traffic, so I had them send it and me to my house on a tilt bed tow truck !

I finally after 3 days walking around it parked in my garage muttering to myself, what in the Hell did you just do by purchasing a fancy sports car that cost more than I paid for my house in 1989, even with interest, I finally went to a gas station to fill a 3 gallon gas can to put enough gas in it to get back to the gas station to fill it up..

That was my first test drive and I was plenty nervous, cause it drove a whole lot different than my old Astro van with the Alpina`s very responsive power/handling, & low to the ground height took some serious learning curve getting used to !
 
Does bmw make a car with a manual trans other than M series cars anymore. I walked a dealership lot today looking at prolly 50 cars. All with low profile tires all with slush boxes. I recall not that long ago you could get an X5 and X3 with manual gearboxes.
 
nolasally said:
Does bmw make a car with a manual trans other than M series cars anymore. I walked a dealership lot today looking at prolly 50 cars. All with low profile tires all with slush boxes. I recall not that long ago you could get an X5 and X3 with manual gearboxes.
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I think you have to go M these days. I have to say, the 8 speed slush box is awfully good. Seems to know when to downshift, still not a stick like I grew up on and used until Chicago traffic killed any enthusiasm for one.
 
@Bill Ferris your buying experience sounds a lot like my wife's when she bought her M4. She was trying to find a TT RS and the BMW was sitting on an Audi dealers lot. She fell head over heels for it and bought it on the spot without really realizing what she had bought. The Audi dealer is part of the Automotive group that she works for so they traded for her 370 without even seeing it. She walked around for the rest of the weekend in a daze wondering WTF she had gotten herself into. :rflmao:

It finally sunk in what an M car was when we were at the BMW dealership buying her a jacket and some of the staff were falling over themselves when they found out what she was driving.
 
nolasally said:
I recall not that long ago you could get an X5 and X3 with manual gearboxes.
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Probably over 12-years ago for manual in the X3 and even longer for the X5. BMW makes the new M3 and M4 in a stick but you can't get it with the Competition package and there are so few being made that I've had customers waiting since November of last year who still don't have a production spot. Even the M5 hasn't been available in a stick since probably 2013 or so and even then that was (hard to believe) ONLY for the US production models. The M2 is sold at a rate exceeding 50% stick. It's a true M-car. My 2013 6-speed 128i M-sport is one of the last normally aspirated six-cylinder engines with a stick sold in the USA. BMW says there will be no sticks in the next generation 2-series M240i or 230i for USA. I currently own about twenty stick BMWs.

The Alpina Z8, as beautiful as it is, was built to offer the Z8 in an automatic. The "regular" Z8s were all manuals.
 
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Just a few of my manual transmission BMWs:

My favorite as a daily driver, because that's what you're supposed to do with a car!
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I try to drive this one once a week, but then it is 36-years old:
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And then I've also been riding BMW bikes for over 50-years. Here are two of my half-dozen:
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And some of mine are quite old and rather unique:
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