Took my neighbor for a spin...

[rhodesman]

Over the past month my neighbor has been asking me for a ride in my e88. He hears me every morning fire her up and drive up the street taking the kids to school and every day coming home with them. He sees me in the garage with the car up on jacks tooling away replacing this or modding that and he's been quite curious about what I've been up to.

Now, I've taken him for a ride in my 2007 335 (with just a JB4) and my 2008 STi (like a gutted race car with a back seat) so he's had the privilege to experience my automobile evolution. Me personally, the 335 was too heavy and long, was by far the largest vehicle I've ever owned. The STi was tons of fun, but felt cheap and out of place for me (like a grown man trying to pretend he's still a kid). The 135 though, it's just enough sophistication to go out on a date with my wife. To one of those fancy "coat and tie" dinners and get the nod of respect from the valets as I drop my wife off at the door (yeah right, like I would let those idiots have the keys!) and still be able to drive around with my backwards cap and t-shirt while running errands.

So my neighbor walks over one day and asks if he can go for a ride, I say sure but my schedule is kind of crazy. My neighbor is a semi-retired airline pilot so he's got more time to spare than I and we leave it as a "when I get a chance". Last night that chance presented itself and I called him to see if he was free. I roll over to his house and before I could honk or text him, he was out the door walking towards me (I guess my exhaust is louder than I thought). He stops 5 feet from my car (I have the top down) and he's just taking in the car's profile. Black paint, Beige interior with the stock 5 spoke rims (I have to admit, I love these rims more than anything), the time is Twilight and my car is relatively freshly cleaned (i.e. prior day). He stands there and comments about the beauty of it all, I can't argue there.

Leaving our neighborhood there are a lot of little streets to wind through before we get to the highway, just long enough to hit that 160*F oil temp as we reach the onramp. This whole time, I'm keeping it under 3k RPM, dogging it and keeping the speed very very...legal. As we enter the highway, I notice a nice 1 mile of open road, took a gander behind and saw nothing to "impede" my better judgment to floor it. 3rd gear, ~3,200RPM I go WOT! Immediately the turbo's spool up to 16PSI, quickly climbing to their 20PSI peak before backing back off as we reach redline. 4th gear, turbo's surge as my custom tune holds timing and keeps the pressure from evacuating, the surge of power kicks us back into the seats once again, car keeps climbing as the turbo spool can be heard through the VTT inlets as well as the cat-less exhaust. We hit 130 and I back it off. Looking over, my neighbors eyes are WIDE open, a grin from ear to ear as his brain takes in what just happened.

As we slow back to legal limits he slowly starts to collect words and formulates a sentence: "I've never felt power like that before!" This coming from a guy who was a fighter pilot in the air force and flies 737's as his day job. He asks how fast we were and I said "somewhere around 130-ish"... "REALLY, wow!??". We talk about what I've done to the car, the mods, the software. He talks about how his son's Ducati 959 (which he just got) doesn't feel that fast. I highly doubt that to be true, but on a bike, I imagine, he wouldn't go WOT just from fear alone.

Two exits up I take a cloverleaf...in 3rd gear 4500rpm pushing it the whole way around. He's gripping the door handle like my son grips his blanky. I exit the cloverleaf punching through 4th one more time before I slow. I take a left turn and head up some country roads. We get to a section of road that was recently repaved, long, straight and flat. I stop. He asks me what I'm doing as I press the DTC button for 5 seconds, I give him a side glance grin as the triangle appears in my cluster and I mash the throttle down while stomping on the brakes. A second later I release the brakes as we leave a trail of smoke and the last couple millimeters of my tire's tread behind. 1-2-3 I hit 80 and relax. Without looking at him I just say "0-60 3.8 seconds" he starts to laugh.

At this point the sun is pretty much gone and we're into the night which tends to bring out more dangers as animals start to move about. So I casually head back towards home. When I drop him off his legs seem a bit wobbly. He thanks me for the drive and congratulates me on my car. I laugh and admit that he's the first person to actually get a true "drive" in my car because no one else would dare go, except my family...who are bound by blood and the law.

All in all, my neighbor (who practically owns a fleet of Honda's) said he might just have to buy a BMW now.

[chris82]

Originally Posted by rhodesman

Over the past month my neighbor has been asking me for a ride in my e88. He hears me every morning fire her up and drive up the street taking the kids to school and every day coming home with them. He sees me in the garage with the car up on jacks tooling away replacing this or modding that and he's been quite curious about what I've been up to.

Now, I've taken him for a ride in my 2007 335 (with just a JB4) and my 2008 STi (like a gutted race car with a back seat) so he's had the privilege to experience my automobile evolution. Me personally, the 335 was too heavy and long, was by far the largest vehicle I've ever owned. The STi was tons of fun, but felt cheap and out of place for me (like a grown man trying to pretend he's still a kid). The 135 though, it's just enough sophistication to go out on a date with my wife. To one of those fancy "coat and tie" dinners and get the nod of respect from the valets as I drop my wife off at the door (yeah right, like I would let those idiots have the keys!) and still be able to drive around with my backwards cap and t-shirt while running errands.

So my neighbor walks over one day and asks if he can go for a ride, I say sure but my schedule is kind of crazy. My neighbor is a semi-retired airline pilot so he's got more time to spare than I and we leave it as a "when I get a chance". Last night that chance presented itself and I called him to see if he was free. I roll over to his house and before I could honk or text him, he was out the door walking towards me (I guess my exhaust is louder than I thought). He stops 5 feet from my car (I have the top down) and he's just taking in the car's profile. Black paint, Beige interior with the stock 5 spoke rims (I have to admit, I love these rims more than anything), the time is Twilight and my car is relatively freshly cleaned (i.e. prior day). He stands there and comments about the beauty of it all, I can't argue there.

Leaving our neighborhood there are a lot of little streets to wind through before we get to the highway, just long enough to hit that 160*F oil temp as we reach the onramp. This whole time, I'm keeping it under 3k RPM, dogging it and keeping the speed very very...legal. As we enter the highway, I notice a nice 1 mile of open road, took a gander behind and saw nothing to "impede" my better judgment to floor it. 3rd gear, ~3,200RPM I go WOT! Immediately the turbo's spool up to 16PSI, quickly climbing to their 20PSI peak before backing back off as we reach redline. 4th gear, turbo's surge as my custom tune holds timing and keeps the pressure from evacuating, the surge of power kicks us back into the seats once again car keeps climbing as the turbo spool can be heard through the VTT inlets as well as the cat-less exhaust, we hit 130 and I back it off. Looking over my neighbors eyes are WIDE open, a grin from ear to ear as his brain takes in what just happened.

As we slow back to legal limits he slowly starts to collect words and formulates a sentence: "I've never felt power like that before!" This coming from a guy who was a fighter pilot in the air force and flies 737's as his day job. He asks how fast we were and I said "somewhere around 130-ish"... "REALLY, wow!??". We talk about what I've done to the car, the mods, the software. He talks about how his son's Ducati 959 (which he just got) doesn't feel that fast. I highly doubt that to be true, but on a bike, I imagine, he wouldn't go WOT just from fear alone.

Two exits up I take a cloverleaf...in 3rd gear 4500rpm pushing it the whole way around. He's gripping the door handle like my son grips his blanket when he's scared. I exit the cloverleaf punching through 4th one more time before I slow. I take a left turn and head up some country roads. We get to a section of road that was recently repaved, long, straight and flat, I stop. He asks me what I'm doing as I press the DTC button for 5 seconds, I give him a side glance grin as the triangle appears in my cluster and I mash the throttle down while stomping on the brakes, a second later I release the brakes as we leave a trail of smoke and the last couple millimeters of my tire's tread behind. 1-2-3 I hit 80 and relax. Without looking at him I just say "0-60 3.8 seconds" he starts to laugh.

At this point the sun is pretty much gone and we're into the night which tends to bring out more dangers as animals start to move about. So I casually head back towards home. When I drop him off his legs seem a bit wobbly. He thanks me for the drive and congratulates me on my car. I laugh and admit that he's the first person to actually get a true "drive" in my car because no one else would dare to go, except my family...who are bound by blood and law.

All in all, my neighbor (who practically owns a fleet of Honda's) said he might just have to buy a BMW now.

Gotta say I almost did a TL;DR when I first saw how long this was but that's some quality writing! (rare on these forums). I really love the 1 series, it's such a special car and very underrated.

[VazzVenom]

Was a pleasure to read and really captures the feeling of driving these fun little cars.

[blue135]

Succinct and well written

[ShocknAwe]

Great story. Thanks for sharing!

[doublevanosrc]

Nice to see you sharing your experiences with others.

[Eyeman]

Was that article also submitted to the Penthouse Forum? Outstanding, so much so it barely sounded believable!!

[rhodesman]

Thanks everyone for the kind words. My English teacher would be proud. It was fun to finally have someone other than me really experience the joy and insanity that these cars deliver.

[PawlyGuNNz]

Great story man!

[A6bullet]

Wow, not gonna lie I had a smile in my face as I read through it.
Pretty sure you're going to see him roll up in a BMW pretty soon..

[JM_128]

Great writing, only missing is a pic of that E88 ?

[Esteban]

Originally Posted by JM_128

Great writing, only missing is a pic of that E88 ?

Yes... post some nice pics!

[rhodesman]

Originally Posted by Esteban

Yes... post some nice pics!

well.... okay, sure!

Here are a couple, kind of older ones but apparently I haven;t been taking many pictures of my car recently

[Esteban]

I love those rims as well. Had them on my first 1er and think they are a pretty great looking stock wheel. Better looking IMO than some of the popular aftermarket wheels we see here on the forum.