Before I sold everything to travel the world and do weird shit, I was big into anything that would take my mind off the boredom and monotony of living in one place long term without many friends and without much to see or do. Since I had money, the answer for me was cool cars. I bought this M3 in spring of 2019, just in time for a summer of cruising the backroads, collecting speeding tickets, and trippin with the top down.

This 2004 e46, with the SMG was equal parts dream car and pain in the ass. The SMG wasn’t a manual and it wasn’t an automatic, it was BMW’s weird robotized clutch setup that slammed through gears when it felt like it, sometimes perfect, sometimes like you got rear-ended. People love to hate it, but I thought it made the car feel alive, unpredictable, like it had moods of its own.

The straight-six under the hood sang when you pushed it. Top down, third gear, ripping through the backroads, there was nothing else like it. The car had that balance that BMW used to brag about: heavy enough to feel planted, light enough to throw around. I’d point it at some empty Pennsylvania country road, or bomb through mountain twisties just to kill an afternoon. It was fast enough to scare you, comfortable enough to cruise for hours, and loud enough to turn heads when the rasp kicked in above 5,000 RPM.

The Drives

I was living in the perfect place to own this car at the time: rural Pennsylvania. The roads here were ideal for a car like this, especially in the summer. There might be a reputation for shitty roads full of potholes like everywhere, but for the most part, the backroads in the summer, especially late summer after construction was dying down and the roads were free, were great.

One of my favorite local runs was to start Cherry Valley Rd in Saylorsburg and take that up past the Delaware Water Gap, then head straight back down, usually turning down roads I wasn’t familiar with to spice things up. Doing this drive so many times meant that I got to learn every side street and back road in this area before too long.

This whole area reminded me of the hometown level in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit on the Playstation 1. Before they moved in a shit load of state trooper barracks you could drive as fast as you wanted. Once the cops started showing up in this area more and more, this one road remained a safe haven long after the others had given way to speed traps and bullshit. Plus, there weren’t many deer either. Hardly a threat of them, since most of the deer population lived on the mountainous area just to the west of this.

The convertible made it comfortable and fun. If I got stuck behind someone on a tight road and couldn’t pass, there was no issue just chilling and cruising for a minute. There was no road rage in this car.

Night Drives

Hitting the road at night was even better. The air cooled down, the convertible top dropped, and the whole world felt wide open. The dash lights glowed that classic BMW orange, and the road stretched out like it was mine alone. No traffic, no distractions, just the hum of the straight-six echoing through empty farm fields and forest edges. A great way to put my mind to rest after a long day of working in the computer shop.

The M3 had this way of making the smallest details feel cinematic. Streetlights flickering on the hood, the smell of fresh-cut grass from a roadside farm, or the way the wind whipped through the cabin at 80 mph with nothing but stars overhead. With no one else around, I could push harder, take tighter lines through the corners, or just relax and cruise slow with music blasting. Either way, the car turned a dead Wednesday night into something worth remembering.

Offroading and winter driving

This is the last car you want to take off the pavement. Or so I thought. After I installed some more rugged tires on it to get throught the harsh PA winter, offroading (driving on gravel or dirt – not exactly mudding), was more accesible. It was a beast in the snow too. The rear wheel drive might seem out of place in a conversation about best sports cars for snowy weather, but in my opinion it really took the cake.

The windshield looked pretty cool covered in ice. But the defrosters and the seat warmers made it just as cozy to be out in as if you were sitting next to a warm fireplace.

Winter driving was some of the most fun, especially on mountain roads leading up to hiking trails. Doing donuts in grocery store parking lots after a fresh snow was another fun time.

I played far too many rally racing games to not take the M3 on the trails, even if I knew it would fuck it up. I put it in a ditch once, luckily a shallow one I was able to pull out of. The car feared for my life and deployed the anti-roll bars, which I spent the next week figuring out how to get back down.

God knows what I did to the underside of this thing. Good thing it was low enough to the ground that I never looked down there.

Hitting up the carwash

After venturing off road, the car wash was always the next stop on the ride home. But even without getting dirty, I made sure to give the car a regular bath. Going to the carwash was a highlight of my day. There was a public self car wash right down the street from me, and I made it part of my routine to go there every two to three days at least.

How much did I spend on this thing

This is the part I don’t like thinking back on. But luckily, I kept a detailed spreadsheet with dates and costs of every thing I ever did to it.

The shop I took it to for the difficult jobs focused specifically on racing BMWs. So I felt like it was in good hands. The price reflected this though. My most expensive stint at the shop was something like five stacks. Luckily, I was making fat stacks at the time, and took a vacation to California while they fiddled with it for a week.

Parking

I wasn’t always behind the wheel. When me and my car were not together, you could often find it chilling in a parking lot, parked like an asshole. I often left the top down when I went into a store or something, but I could never quite master the ability to jump in without opening the door.

Selling

Sadly, as transmission, subframe, and more vanos issues began to show, it was time to sell the old gal before she took everything I had. Maybe if I had a mechanic shop instead of a computer shop, I would have kept it, but the costs were begining to outweight the fun. And unlike a normal child that I could have sent to work in the mines, this one would never be able to earn its keep. So I had to sell it off.

I dealt with a few fuckheads on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace before deciding that bullshit was not worth it. Finally, I decided to pop down to Carfax and get the insta-sale. I got $9,000 for it the same day. A tidy loss of $10,000 from my original purchase price, and another nearly $20,000 in maintenance put my cost of ownership at about 10k per year. Definitely worth it for being such a bad ass car.