Roundel Weekly: My Turn

Written By Illini Chapter Member: Rick Roudebush

Car folks are awesome! I have said this many times, but it was proven over and over again at our fourth annual ///M Madness get together. You see, our Illini Chapter, in conjunction with the BMW of Peoria dealership, co-host this gathering of all things ///M at the dealership every year as a celebration of the ultimate of the ultimate driving machines. We do this by asking our members to bring the M cars they have in their stables to the dealership and display them alongside any new ones that the dealership has on hand.

This event was thought up by our past President, Christopher "Woody" Wood, who sold cars there and the event has grown each year since. When Woody moved on to a different dealership that sells cars from Stuttgart that start with a P, we were left searching for someone in the club to help the BMW dealership organize the event this year. This has always been a fun event and I knew I was going to be retired by then, so I volunteered.

Then it hit me! This is the 100th year of BMW. In fact, the Blau Mit Weiss emblem was created on my birthday, March 7. Well, not the same year, but the same day of the year. I was brought into this world on the 38th anniversary of the birth of Bavarian Auto Werks, you do the math.

So I got to thinking, we should do something special. Then it came to my attention it was also the 40th anniversary of the M Division of BMW. How cool would it be if we could get one of every M ever created by BMW, all lined up in the order they were sent to the USA? That would be very cool, right? Could we get this done?

Well, nobody in our Chapter is fortunate enough to have an M1, so that was going be a problem. In fact, most have never even seen the rare beast and some were not sure what the mighty one that started it all even was. I would have to reach out beyond the boundaries of our Chapter for that one, that's for sure.

How many different models of Ms are there, anyway? A little research reveals, "Oh boy, that's a lot of cars to find." More research tells me many are quite rare, even harder, but there is no putting this genie back in the bottle now. 

How do I find an M1 and convince the owner to share it with us for the day, dead center in the middle of Illinois? A quick scan of the Special Interest Groups (SIG) listed in the Roundel tells me the M1 registry is headed up by Mike Ura. I met Mike when my wife Sonja and I were at the Rolex 24 with our friends Brett and Dee Sutton. In fact, Mike, Dee, and I rode the Ferris Wheel together at around midnight during the Rolex 24 with hopes of getting a good picture while Brett and Sonja clung to terra ferma.

A quick email to Mike unearthed three M1s in the Chicago area..., but, alas, all three declined our invitation. Not one to give up easily, I emailed Frank Patek. "You know of any M1's I might get for our M Madness show this year?"

Frank introduced me to Scott Hughes via email. That name sounded somewhat familiar, but I made no connection at that time. I was startled when Scott wrote back saying he would be happy to bring his M1, but he had plans for the weekend we had picked for the event this year. Seems as though our dart throw at the calendar back in January had landed on the Vintage at the Vineyards weekend and also this little circle track thing going on in Indiana somewhere (Indy 500).

I had also asked Frank if he thought there was any chance we could get the racing M1 and the #25 CSL Batmobile to come over from the RLL Racing garage in Columbus, Ohio. Turns out everybody was busy that weekend in May.

"What if we moved our date for the show, would you be willing to bring your car another time?" I asked Scott and Frank asked the RLL folks. The transportation funds for the Mobile Tradition semi had been appropriated for the year already. Others had realized it was BMW's 100th year and made plans long before me. 

Starting to sound like no M1 for our show, then Scott replied with three dates he had open for me to choose from. A quick confer with our board and the dealership and behold, we had a new date.

I had actually lassoed an M1 for the show!

Keep in mind I had no idea at this time that Scott and his car are in South Carolina, I just presumed Frank knew someone halfway close to Peoria that had an M1 that Mike and I didn't know about. Then Scott sends me a picture of his orange M1, and he is standing beside it with two trophies on the cowl and a ribbon under the windshield wiper taken at a golf course somewhere with a boom TV camera in the background. I'm starting to realize I have lassoed no "ordinary" M1 or M1 owner, if there is such a thing.

A few weeks passed and Sonja and I drove our 1988 E24 M6 down to Chattanooga, Tennessee to an annual gathering of big coupe BMW's known as South East Shark Fest. We checked into the host hotel, gathered up all our goodies at SESF check in, stashed our stuff in our room and I headed down to the hotel bar and grill for some adult beverages and car talk.

I scanned the bar looking for some familiar faces and I thought I saw the same guy that was in the picture of Scott's M1 sitting at a table with some Sharkfesters I knew. I turned heal and went back out to the check in table to ask Kai Xing, one of the organizers of the 14-year long event, if that was indeed Scott Hughes in there. 

He said, "Yes, he brought a beautiful E9".

I went back in and introduced myself as soon as there was a lull in the conversation and was offered a seat at the cool kids table. I don't think Scott recognized my name at first. Scott knows and meets so many people, that is no surprise. Eventually I told Scott and Fran I was the guy from Illinois who had invited him to ///M Madness.

As the car talk goes on I began to realize Scott had agreed to bring his car all the way to Peoria, IL for a day from Greenville, SC. At that moment I began to realize I had not just lassoed an M1, but had also hooked a whale of a guy.

When we got back home, we still had several weeks to go until the big day. Once we had announced we had an M1 for the show, a bunch of M's seemed to fall out of the sky so they could be seen in the same lineup as Scott's car. However, after our chapter stables had been picked clean of all M's, I still had a lot of blanks on the M list to fill.

I reached out to some online forums, Facebook sites, and stumbled onto #MOTORSPORTSLIFE, a group of German car enthusiasts in the Chicago area organized by one Atanas Zhliev. We chatted back and forth a little bit, I explained the event I was organizing and shared the list of cars still needed to fill in the blanks. Atanas owns one of the M3s I was looking for and knew of several of the other cars needed. He thought it sounded like a fun event for his group and agreed to help gather people and cars willing to come down to Peoria for the big show. We worked together to try to gather one of every M, but as the time got short, we were still missing a few cars.

I had reached out to Barbara Adams, editor of the Windy City Breeze, with a flyer invitation to our event, but had done so too late to be in the June edition. We had met Barbara and Larry Schettle a few times at races at Road America. In fact, they invited us to share a table for pizza at one of our favorite haunts in nearby Plymouth one evening afterwards when they saw us waiting on a table.

I felt they undoubtedly had some ideas where the few missing cars from our list might be lurking, so I sent the invite again along with a desperate plea for the four cars still needed. They reached out to members they knew who had the missing links in our chain. Sure enough, we had more fantastic folks from the Chicago area willing to get up way too early in the morning on a Saturday to be in Peoria at 9:30 a.m. to fill the roster of every M produced by BMW. 

Scott's orange M1 was a big attention getter, but Scott himself stole the show when we asked him to share his story of how he came to acquire it, the history of the M1 and the beginning of the Motorsports division. He also spoke of his driving experience in the Milla Miglia, the goals of the BMWCCA Foundation of which he is a board member, and he recognized our Chapter's TRSS Chair Rick Largen for his leadership in growing our Chapter's Tire Rack Street Survival program from one school a year to two, doubling our efforts to train more safe young drivers. We also used the opportunity to present our Steve Hyland with his much deserved "Friend of the BMW CCA" National Recognition Award. That's a whole other story!

It was really quite impressive and satisfying to see all the beautiful Ms lined up in the order they were built along with a few bonus cars, to see the way the signature kidney grills had morphed from the 80s to present day. The real stars of the show though were the dedicated people who had polished up their cars and made the considerable effort to share them for the day or just came to enjoy the show.

Many thanks to BMW of Peoria for hosting the event and providing lunch and drinks. Many thanks to all the folks who were so generous with their time and cars. My friend JR England has said, "It may be the cars that attract us, but it's the people that keep us coming back." 

Our ilk is way more than a collection of gearheads, it is also a fantastic group of kind, passionate car folks who will go to great lengths to help a fellow enthusiast they might not even know. Whether it be with figuring out that pesky mechanical issue you might be having with your old Bimmer, your need for another cone shagger or instructor for your TRSS school, help measuring and chalking out spaces for a perfect course or display, or some last minute bailout by finding or bringing one of every M ever made a great distance for a show we call ///M Madness in Peoria, IL. 

As I told Scott in my email thanking him for bringing his car, "It's such a fantastic thing when someone attains the ability to give back generously and does so, but it is an astounding thing when that same person also gives of their most valuable asset, time." Car people are awesome, I'm telling you, it's ///M Madness.