And mine won’t be getting replaced for another 4 weeks. Thanks, BMW.

The track and that trestle has been around for a long time as a BNSF-owned property. In fact, I believe the entirety of the Cascade route is on BNSF-owned rail.

Rec for Skywalker reference.

Those fires are horrific. I was in grad school in the LA Basin during the Altadena fires of ‘93 and that was nothing compared to what has been going on in California this year.

Well, technically (dons political science hat), Stalin was a totalitarian socialist. Although you could argue that the Soviet Union was never truly socialism during the Stalin years as you can’t jump from rural agrarian / feudal society to socialist / communist per Marxist theory as it requires an industrialized…

While everyone and their dog on Jalop will probably shout me down, I’ll still maintain that the E82 128i is a more rewarding car than the 135i because of the naturally-aspirated engine.

(1) The BMW S70/2 is not a ‘standard BMW engine’ - it’s a one-off produced for McLaren that is an entirely different beast from the normal M70 / S70B56 engine used by the BMW 7 and 8-series.

(2) Even the standard M70 / S70B56 motors are somewhat of a fiddly expensive nightmare to keep maintained, and the S70/2 has 70…

The CH is probably my second favorite (to the LM) BBS wheel. Although I have a soft spot for the old E30 M3 15x7 BBS cross-spoke.

My 12-year-old son saw the photo of the LMs above and said, “Damn...”

Well played, sir.

On the left coast, those would be called either basket-weave or cross-spoke. Never heard them referred to as honeycombs as that implies hexagonal holes, and basket-weave / cross-spoke BBS’s have diamond pattern holes.

My son just about plotzed because (a) R34 and (b) the photo was taken about 20 miles from our house. Thank you for making his morning.

Don’t rest your hand on the gear lever, you yobbo!

Surprised to see that the Bosch 009 is no longer the recommended distributor for reliable VW-ing. I guess the more you know...

E30 to E82 comparison is a good one. The E82 is a solid design with nimble handling (better than the E30 simply because of the march of time) and is reasonably light, at least by 21st century standards. The N52 owes more to the M50 motor than the M20 of the E30, but is still a rev-happy straight-six with a…

I have a 2010 sport-package (sadly, with a sunroof) 6MT 128i, and I have to say it is the most enjoyable BMW I’ve ever driven (and that’s including every flavor of the E30 short of the iX and a few flavors of E36). Wonderfully tactile steering and that N52 that just pulls and pulls.

OK, the convenience package is a…

I’m pretty sure you’d have to lengthen the body in order to accomplish this, Jason. The Type III motor is deeper (fore & aft) than the Type I / Type II motor due to the fan / fan housing / bellows being attached to the rear of the crank. You’d need to garner about 5-6" of length, and unless you wanted to lose…

Time to break out the Purple-K...