Mr. Five, Part One

My father has a habit.

He doesn't do drugs. He buys old BMWs. It started out as just talking about old BMWs. When I was in elementary school he tossed around the idea of buying/restoring a BMW 2002; preferably a fuel injected Tii model. He happened to drive this particular variant in and after college and for obvious reasons he believed getting another one was a fantastic idea. I agreed, as the Volvo station wagon after Volvo station wagon I'd been subjected too as an adolescent did not really do it for my fast and furious twelve-year-old self.

By the time I made it to high school the talking about 2002s transformed into looking for one, and in 1998 he actually, unbelievably purchased a 1973 2002 tii with a crank sunroof. By now I had my very own rock star hand me down Volvo wagon and was, gulp, licensed to drive. My dad effectively fostered the family lineage of obsession with the Bavarian Motor Werks in me and off we went.

Fast-forward 6 years, 16 thousand dollars and 106 million hours of work and my father has what can best be described as a completely mint 32 year old BMW. In his tenure as old car owner his team of crack mechanics (myself, brother and father) successfully learned such awesome things as:
1. Don't hook up the spark plug wires to the wrong spark plugs.
2. The best way to remove and/or install a heater core is by punching it.
3. When backing out of the garage do not under any circumstances drive into the wall.

Now that we were qualified car guys and had completely finished the old 02 it was obviously time to look for something else; maybe a newer, faster, more awesome old BMW. For some reason the 1988 M5 model perked my dad's interest, and off we went on another vigorous car search. Thanks to the glory of Ebay and martinis, on December 15 my dad's Ebay account (read: I) bid on and won a particularly fine looking example of the '88 M5. One catch, the car was in Indianapolis, Indiana.

This is the best thing about my dad- In the morning, seeing that his Ebay account had won a new old BMW he decided that the best thing to do would be to actually buy the car, book three flights to Indiana, and take the team of crack mechanics to Indy to get the car and drive it back.

Now let me say one thing about the car. In BMW nomenclature the letter M stands for Motosport Division. As you can imagine, subjecting a car to engineers working at M results in some pretty exciting automobile features. In the case of the ‘88 M5 this means a 300hp 3.5l 6-cylinder motor, competition clutch and shifter, and completely dialed race suspension. This is a 4-door sedan that can dust a Corvette. Best of all, it came in any color you wanted, as long as that color was black.

South West Airlines Flight 605 had the mechanics in Indianapolis by 11am on a blustery Tuesday in December. The team arrived at the car brokerage right after noon. The car’s condition was outstanding and we were ready to roll back to Albany.

Except one thing.
NO TIRES.

At this point the team of mechanics learned its first lesson from Mr. Five:

Guaranteed by noon delivery actually means guaranteed by 5pm delivery.

Let me explain. The car had some fittingly high performance very slick tires on it, which happened to be completely bald. Recognizing this beforehand my father ordered new all season tires to be delivered to the shop before the airline delivered us. The mechanic would put the new tires on the car and the new nobbys would get us from Indy to Albany in likely lake effect awesomeness. Since the old tires were already off the car, all we could do was wait while the car sat on a lift.

The tires showed at 4pm and we were on the road by 5pm. Not bad, but it did make us regret opting for the 6am flight out of Albany International. At 5:02pm the car’s headlights were switched on for the first time in roughly a dozen years, and we discovered that only one of four beams lit. Pulling back in the garage at 5:03pm we learned the broker didn’t have any appropriate bulbs. At 5:09pm we were back on the road Cyclops style. After hitting a NAAPA removing the car's grill and installing new bulbs, off we went, with the grill relocated to the trunk.

Next stop, not Indiana.