Well, everyone else is talking about it, so I guess I should offer my opinion, too. In Advertising Age two days ago is an article titled Changing a Winning Ad Slogan for No Good Reason. It boils down to this: BMW is no longer The Ultimate Driving Machine. It’s A Company of Ideas. Bleck.
Not only is it stoopid to drop the most recognized automobile tagline ever used, but to replace it with such mindless, unmeaningful drivel has got to be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like DMNaskale at mye28.com said:
…ideas are a pretty bland concept with no context to shape them. Dumb ideas, bad ideas, boring ideas, there are lots of ideas out there. The only ideas I want out of BMW are ones that result in ultimate driving machines.
To continue DMN’s thought…this slogan change is a bad idea.
Well, I am back from vacation, and finally caught up at work. It only took a week to catch back up from a week off…ugh. It was a good vacation. We got to see lots of family in Wichita and KC. The kids had a great time at Grandma’s new condo and playing with Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Great Grandparents in KC. We actually got back last Tuesday night, but work has kept me away from here…
Our mode of transportation in Kansas and Missouri was a rented 2006 Chrysler Pacifica. I had never looked too closely at one of these before, but it looked like it had 6 seats and some room for cargo. With 3 kids and all of our bags, that’s exactly what we needed — too bad we didn’t get it! The Pacifica does have 6 seats, ours was equipped with quad seating in the second row–two captain chairs–and a bench in the third row. However, if you want to take anything with you, you better not fill up both of the seats in the bench. For our drive to KC from Wichita, we needed to take a duffle bag. The duffle bag almost didn’t fit behind that third row seat. If we’d had anything else with us besides the duffle and umbrella stroller, I would have had to fold the 50/50 split in the bench. All in all, this isn’t a bad car, but if you’ve got a family and think this might be the car you’re looking for to take long road trips, or even trips to the local grocery store…think again. The ride is nice, it drives like a sedan and accellerates like a coupe (when using the pseudo SMG mode on the shifter). Nothing spectacular, but a good ‘around the town’ driver. I never computed the fuel economy, but I’m sure it’s better than a hummer and worse than a Yaris! We did make it from the airport, a day around Wichita, all the way to KC, and a day of driving around there before we had to fill up for our drive back to Wichita. So, I guess it’s ok.
I’ll never buy one. I prefer the 20 year old BMW, and the wife prefers the size and cargo of her Yukon XL. For the rental, we would probably have been better off in a mid or full size sedan (more trunk room and seats 5) than this thing. For instance, I know my family fits fine in the e39 BMW 528i, and there’s plenty of trunk space.
athomas at the M5 board has it all down in a nutshell.
Links to this post have made the rounds on most M5 related message boards this summer, and, like many readers have said, it nearly brings tears to my eyes. Mr. Thomas describes perfectly the experiences of driving a 20 year old car. Specifically a 20 year old BMW. I think his writing could explain to anyone why I drive my e28 as often as I can. You’ll want to read the entire post, but since it’s long, I’ll quote here where he starts and finishes. I think it’s a pretty good summary:
Hey, so I bought one of these things a few weeks ago, I?ve been driving it around a little bit, dropping in on the forums here and there and, along with my wife and my friends, asking myself ?what the hell am I thinking with this old car??
Because the BMW E28 M5 is a silly car. Perhaps it was superlative when it was new but now it is a machine that time has left behind. It has a motor that isn?t particularly strong, (our family grocery getter, an XC 90 has more ponies, as they like to say in the auto writing world) it doesn?t go very fast, (a new Toyota Camry can keep up), it isn?t particularly well built or appointed (again see the Camry example), it is loud and it rides like a forklift.
…
And so I found the car on-line, made sure it was what it said it was, bought it and flew to San Francisco to pick it up and take it back East. I wasn?t quite sure what to make of it initially but got my first hint of the future a day later on I-80 coming East out of Sacramento across the floor of the Central Valley just before dawn.
There were just a few cars on a butter smooth road and the cruise control was set to 80 when some kid in a Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX came weaving up traffic and ended up in front of me. He and the car in the right lane were running even at about ninety, no one in front of them. Hmmmm. I put the M5 in the left lane crept up on that GSX in 5th gear until I was 10 feet off his bumper. Then I did what I like to think the white-coated, short-haired, bespectacled, clip-board carrying Hun who created my machine wanted me to do ? I gave that GSX a long steady flash of my brights. GSX did as I expected, he accelerated, moved over to the right hand lane and kept accelerating. I gave him a few seconds to declare himself and then, heel-toe, at 90mph, I dropped into 4th and the 20 year old sleek machine pulled across 4500 to 6500 rpms, joyfully howling like a turbo jet, lunging forward until I put her in fifth and kept going rock steady until I was locked at 140 mph, the GSX disappearing in the rear view mirror as I hurled across the waking Central Valley into the riot of the coming sun.
cheers
a thomas
Yes, Mr Thomas, cheers.
I’m always watching my blog’s statistics. Probably more than I should, given how much I post lately. I’ve noticed that quite a few people are finding this blog based on searching for Guido, the Italian forklift. The posts about Guido should be off the front page by now, so I thought I would post links to those here and over at the right of the main page.
I absolutely loved this movie. For you Isetta fans out there, make sure you stick around to see the credits. There IS an Isetta, without question, in the credits. The Cars version of Monsters, Inc, Monster Trucks Inc, features the Billy Crystal character cast as an Isetta.
Also, this week I found the Wikipedia page for Cars. It features an unbelievable amount of trivia about the movie. Do yourself a favor and check it out!
Run on Wed, Jul 28
5.09 mi in 43:48 (08:36 min/mi)
HR 162 bpm - Burned 716 C
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