By Nate Risch
    02/29/2016
    Last week I bought a 2003 E39 530i five-speed sport-package car for $1,500. It needed only a fresh battery thrown in and the tires pumped up for it to be awakened from a six-month snooze, rocked out of a snowbank, and test-driven. Dent-free and rust-free Titan Silver on the outside and rip-free and scuff-free black leather on the inside, its appearance was marred only by the absence of the original lovely Style 42 cross-spoke alloys, their rightful place usurped by a truly objectionable set of corroded five-spoke Beyern wheels with badly peeling superficial chrome.
    By Nate Risch
    02/22/2016
    We’re only two weeks away from the exact 100th anniversary of BMW’s creation as a corporate entity in Germany. On March 7, 1916, aircraft-engine manufacturer Rapp Motorenwerke became Bayerische Motorenwerke. The company’s first product was the BMW IIIa inline six-cylinder, single-overhead-cam water-cooled airplane engine that helped make the Fokker D.VII the best German fighter of the First World War. The airplane was so good that the Allies specifically made the confiscation of all remaining examples a stipulation of the Treaty of Versailles.
    By Nate Risch
    02/22/2016
    The purchase of Car #13 was spawned in a most unexpected way—incubated during two days of frigid weather over the long Presidents Day weekend. On the first day, I spent virtually the entire day on Craigslist, just to have something to do in a warm house. It was during this marathon that I found the car. And on the second, I went out in frigid temps and bought it.
    By Nate Risch
    02/16/2016
    Oh sweet god in the tumbleweeds, I’ve gone and drunk the Kool-Aid: I love this car. If the M2 isn’t the best damn all-around track rat and street-show-off BMW since the E30 M3—yes, including the 1 Series M coupe, its most direct ancestor—then there is no order in the universe. You seriously need this bad ride.
    By Nate Risch
    02/15/2016
    It’s February and it’s ten degrees in Boston. And I’m writing about resurrecting the air-conditioning in an E30. When I bought the 1987 E30 325is back in August 2014, among the things on the to-do list was addressing the fact that the air-conditioning didn’t work. I hooked up my nitrogen tank, pressurized the system, sprayed Big Blu leak-detecting soap solution at every a/c component and joint I could reach, and found a bad leak at the receiver-drier.

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