BMW E30 3 Series are like rescue dogs: They have a habit of just showing up on my doorstep—sometimes literally. And like rescue dogs, I usually can't turn them away. The last three E30s I’ve owned have all come to me on their own.

    A 1990 325iX that showed up in December was just such an example. I bought it, sorted it, then sold it to a good friend from high school, but not before one of my actual rescue dogs bit him. And then his wife. And the—cringe—his daughter. When I asked him how he liked the car, he said he loved it, but added, “Dude, your dog bit my whole family.”

    “Yeah, sorry about that, mate. They were just love nips.”

    The most recent E30 was a little different. Rather than just showing up, I was forced into partial ownership of it by no fewer than four other BMW CCA instructors. It came from Atlanta, were it had been prepped for BMW Club Racing in the Spec E30 class. The leader of this newly founded ownership cult is named Cory; he grew up in the BMW culture of the Southeast, where Spec E30 is huge.

    His enthusiasm for the car was relentless. He had good reason; it was well-built and competitive, having several top-five finishes. Although it’s not cheap, splitting the acquisition and racing costs among five people is manageable. Being someone who routinely abandons all logic, reason, and fiscal responsibility in order to make grossly irresponsible BMW purchases, it would seem like a no-brainer for me to jump on the bandwagon, but I had some out-of-character reservations.

    The first was that when we showed up to race, we would be racing tumbleweeds, because Spec E30 is dead in Colorado; the Spec E30 fields of local BMW Club Racing, NASA, and even the SCCA were abandoned here years ago like the facial razors of flannel-wearing bearded Colorado millennials. The BMW track weapon of choice in the Mile High State is the E36 M3, and the fields of all three racing bodies are thick with them.

    I knew of three potential built-and-log-booked E36 M3 candidates that we could collectively buy into, but Cory’s passion for the E30 outweighed my logic and my budget. Despite being slower, an E30 would be cheaper to operate and fun to race. Racing is as much about the people and the experience as it is winning, so not wanting to miss the opportunity to race with my buddies, I told Cory I was in.

    E30 racing might not be dead in Colorado, either; we just needed to find out where all of the E30s had gone. They went to budget endurance-racing with 24 Hours of LeMons, the ChumpCar World Series, and World League Racing, abbreviated WRL.

    We decided to focus on WRL. After Cory picked the car up, we set about testing and prepping it. Our first test day revealed a very-well-sorted E30; it was perfectly balanced and delightfully neutral—perhaps the best-balanced E30 I have driven. Turn-in was crisp, without a hint of understeer, yet rotation was easy to manage and allowed easily pointed exits. The brakes and tires were nearly dead by the time I drove it, but I was able to scrub speed on turn-in and still set very respectable lap times. Our short to-do list included installing a radio-communication system, and new decals, brakes, and tires, along with basic rule-compliance items like nets and harnesses. Our first WRL race was six weeks away, so it was an easy list to accomplish.

    Our team consisted of a diverse mix of characters. Cory is a baby-faced thirty-something entrepreneur who runs his own automotive-focused graphic-design business. He owns an E30 M3 and a recently departed E36 M3 that met its end, tragically, after being rear-ended by a felon in the wee hours of the morning.

    Mark is an ex-pro mountain-bike racer from New Zealand who time-trials a 1 Series M Coupe with the Rocky Mountain Chapter. He is a pro through and through—organized, detailed, and ice-cold in the heat of competition. Mark and his wife, Katie, would be providing food and beverage for the race weekend.

    Fox, another self-employed entrepreneur, campaigns an E46 M3 in autocross. Fox is fastidiously organized, and always precise in his appearance; he may have worn designer jeans while wrenching in a pool of gasoline under our E30.

    Eric does stuff for the Air Force that I am not at liberty to discuss, and owns a Euro-S50B32-swapped Hennarot E30 M3 that runs identical lap times to my M coupe, due to both car and driver. For support, we brought along Justin and Parker, both friends and employees of my side-business auto brokerage. Their official titles are Employee #1 and Employee #2, but their actual contributions are priceless; we couldn’t have raced without them.

    I rounded out the team, showing up in my vanagon with two rescue dogs in tow—including the one that likes to bite whole families. I contributed with radio-communication standards, wrenching as much as a torn bicep would allow, and by wasting no opportunity for infantile humor.

    The week before the race, Eric grabbed the E30 to finish off some minor details. One of those details involved dropping the fuel tank to install dual fuel pumps and a swirl pot, and welding in a quick-fill port. It wasn’t a minor detail. Many sleepless nights later, we found ourselves at the track the evening before the race with a fuel system with more leaks than the FBI in an election year; each time we plugged a leak, a new one would sprout. Eric’s was a valiant effort, but if we were going to make the race start—less than ten hours away—we needed to find a stock fuel tank.

    I happened to have one in an E30 Touring I had imported from Italy, just a short 300-mile round-trip away. Eric sped off into the night, while Justin and Parker got to work dropping the leaky fuel tank. The rest of the team bedded down and awoke to find the replacement gas tank fitted—but annoyingly, it was just as leaky as the first. Twenty-five years of Southern Mediterranean climate had dry-rotted every bit of rubber on it into non-existence.

    We kept cool heads, troubleshooting one leak at a time as the race start came and went. The final culprit turned out to be a broken vent tube on top of the tank, which I repaired in short order with a Sawzall and extra fuel line after we dropped the exhaust, driveshaft, and fuel tank for the third time in so many hours. Mark, armed with his sweet-talking Kiwi accent, was able to charm the officials into letting us join the race once we had a safe car. No sooner than halfway through the race we had a leak-free car that passed tech.

    I suited up and took the first driving stint. I came out of the pit lane driving like my hair was on fire—a real possibility, thanks to fresh fuel vapor—and raced hard for five turns… until the E30 promptly died. A short tow back to the paddock later, we quickly traced the problem to a bad fuel-pump relay. Back in the race, our goal became a simple one: Keep the car running long enough to finish the day and allow each driver some seat time.

    The field was thick with varied competitors. The fastest cars were in the GTO Class, which was led by a pair of beautiful BMW M235i Racing factory-built race cars. Nipping at their heels was a pack of a half-dozen Porsche Boxsters, Mazda Miatas, BMW E36s and E46s, and Toyota MR2s; a Chevy Caprice Classic rounded out the field.

    We were the only E30, but based on our lap times, would have been competitive in the GP3 Class. Somehow we didn’t even finish last with our paltry 79 laps!

    Looking back at the day as I write this through the fog of sleep deprivation, our race was won before the race began. We were able to come together to overcome adversity and partake in the shared joy of racing a classic BMW. It was proof of my point that racing as much about the people and the experiences as the car—even one with persistent fuel leaks.—Alex McCulloch