1M Weekend

[rusty racer]

Hi,
So managed to squeeze in an amazing amount of car time and activities into one weekend. Apologize for my poor photo skills.

Saturday:

We started Saturday morning with three of us from Charlotte, NC meeting up with our 1Ms. V1k0d3n and Sean67:




Mine is the VO in the fore ground

My wife and her brother came along in our 08 M3 DCT too:





We headed down to Euro Auto Fest at the BMW plant in Spartanburg. Checked out the beautiful show cars:

(I am restoring a 1969 alfa GTV so this one caught my eye)









And then headed to the performance center to get some time on the wet track on the 650s and some timed track runs in a 135i. Good fun.

Wifey headed out for the rat race on the wet oval track




My favorite poster in the PC I want one:



We had a great time. Definitely found the 135 wanting for power and handling now that I am used to my 1M. The other surprise was how much attention our cars got. Every time we returned to them there would be several people gathered around looking and taking pictures. Funny but I guess many people have yet to see them in person much less three at the same time.





But that's not all there is still Sunday!!!!

[rusty racer]

So I was turned on to a sunday mountain drive by a friend with a RSX only to find out the event was actually planned by a bunch of Hendrick BMW guys and was mostly tuned M3s and M5s. What an awesome time.

We met in Charlotte in the wee hours of the morning:









then headed down to why 321 where we meet up with some more cars and actually picked up a random M5. So the group grew to about 18 cars and about 25 people.




We headed up 321 to 40 west then to 221 to 226 but the real fun was 226a called the diamondback.

[rusty racer]

The 1M was by far the star performer on these tight narrow twisting roads. Glad to have already put in some track time I knew we were not even near the limits. Wifey wasn't so sure, but gained confidence with each turn. The most impressive part was on those hidden/blind reducing radius turns. Come around the corner and the radius tightens, no problem, little more turn in and we are good to go. We were on the bumper of the tunned e46 m3 leading the pack the whole way. And he knows these roads quite well. 1M took it like it was just another day at the park. Love the low end torque on this car makes repeated up and down shifting not needed. Left it in 3rd for most of it. Pulls no problem from 2000 rpm up.



Butt shot:



We met at the bottom of the mountain then headed out around lake james and back to charlotte. Great event free drive and so much fun.











Home safe n sound

[v1k0d3n]

it was a great weekend! i had no clue how huge the october car show was at the PC/BMW factory! i wish i could've made it for the sunday drive as well. did dustin from hendrick show up by chance? he's been asking me to head up with them...i just haven't got around to it. i have a bunch of pictures from the car show as well and i'll put some pictures up of the 1M's later today.

EDIT: actually, would you and the wife like to go again in a couple of weeks? rachel and I were talking about doing a hiking weekend...and the fall colors in NC this year are supposed to be a 9/10. Looks like the tops of the mountains peaked this weekend...and will trickle down the following couple of weekends.

http://www.visitnc.com/journeys/arti...-color-reports

[rusty racer]

Some good pics from others on the drive:

[Dackelone]

Man... that looks like a fun event!

[DooBs]

Very cool. I hope to be part of some of those in the future

[1Pirate]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing your pictures too.

BTW your black grilles really look good on VO.