RECENT ARTICLES
The Ultimate Driving Museum Kick-Starts New Exhibit With Vintage Open House
Community, Events, Lifestyle, Motorrad
The Ultimate Driving Museum has hit yet another grand slam with their latest exhibit, BMW Motorcycles: A Century of Innovation. For this year, they’ve curated a cool collection of classic and modern motorcycles (and vehicles powered by motorcycle engines) to celebrate BMW Motorrad’s 100th anniversary. 100 years!? As Ron...
James Clay And Evan Levine Win Class In One Lap Of America
There’s no other car event in the US like One Lap of America. Participants spend around ten days traveling to various competitive events around the country, which in 2023 included stops at nine different venues, starting and ending at Tire Rack headquarters in Indiana. James Clay and Evan Levine...
The MINI John Cooper Works 1to6 Edition: Number 72
We really shouldn’t give MINI a hard time about their continuous and frequent release of special edition models. After all, it seems like they are one of the few manufacturers still offering fun-to-drive enthusiast cars equipped with manual transmissions. And that’s where special edition Number 72 shines—the MINI John...
The All-New 2024 5 Series Unwrapped—Five Flavors Of 5s Incoming!
BMW has finally taken the covers off the all-new G60 5 Series! You may recall that at the end of last month, BMW teased some preliminary photos of the upcoming 5—in camouflage of course—and gave us a small taste of some of the new model’s specs. We also took...
The Road To The Vintage—And Pizza!
Who doesn’t love a great road trip? And what could be a better destination than a large gathering of other road-trip-loving classic BMW enthusiasts and their cars? For the 450-plus Vintage-goers that traveled to Asheville and Hot Springs, North Carolina last weekend, it served as an excellent reason to...
Wins For M4 GT4, M2 CS, And MINI At Circuit Of The Americas
The SRO America championships held their third race weekend of the season at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas this past weekend, and it was a very successful weekend for BMW and MINI, with multiple podiums in the GT4 America and TC America races. In contrast, it...
Gallery: A Weekend At The Vintage 2023
BMW enthusiasts traveled to Asheville, North Carolina for the 19th annual Vintage gathering this past Saturday, May 20th. Read the BimmerLife story “The Road To The Vintage—And Pizza!” to find out more. To see photos from the Vintage weekend, including The Vintage Open House event at BMW CCA’s The...
ROWE Racing Finishes Second In ‘Ring 24 Hour
The BMW teams competing in the Nürburgring 24 Hour race were considered favorites heading into the event after winning the first three rounds of the Nürburgring Endurance Championship races that preceded the 24-hour race this season. They didn’t show that same speed in the qualifying sessions leading up to...
M Chapter Teams Up With CSF For SoCal BMW Event
M Chapter and CSF are teaming up to host a huge September event in SoCal: CSF Select MPowered by BMW! This exclusive and free event will feature a curated selection of the best BMWs in North America. CSF and M Chapter will host a variety of industry vendors, food...
My Lost Weekend
Due to the wonders of Facebook, I am being deluged by memories of where I was this weekend last year, two years ago, five years ago, thirteen years ago. They all point back to the same event: the Vintage in Asheville (formerly Vintage at the Vineyard, held in Winston-Salem),...
National Capital Chapter Shines At 39th Deutsche Marque Concours d’Elegance
Sunday, May 7th marked the 39th Deutsche Marque Concours d’Elegance (DMC), an annual automotive event bringing out the cleanest vintage and modern examples from three German automotive clubs in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Which three? The Mercedes-Benz Club of America’s (MBCA) Greater Washington Section returned, being one of...
Patricia McLeod de Witt: January 3, 1941 – April 7, 2023
Patricia McLeod de Witt was an active member of Sacramento Valley Chapter of BMW CCA making a lasting and profound impact on her community. She recently passed and her obituary is below, with details of a memorial service on May 27, 2023. Sacramento, California – “Though she be but...
Join Nittany Bimmers In Carlisle This May
On May 12th and 13th, Nittany Bimmers are hosting a BMW CCA regional event in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Carlisle Import & Performance Nationals Car Show. There will be a large dedicated section on the field for BMW owners to exhibit their cars, socialize with members, and...
Twenty Years Of Landfill Provided Power At Plant Spartanburg
Did you know that BMW’s commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability projects began well before development of hybrid and fully electric powertrains? In addition to these more recently produced hybrid and electric vehicles, they’ve been researching and producing alternative fuel-powered vehicles (hydrogen) since the 1970s. If not developing new...
The Cherry Blossom Run Celebrates Three Years
For its third year in a row, the Washington, D.C. area’s Cherry Blossom Run has dazzled both local and not-so-local BMW enthusiasts in attendance. What started as an impromptu early morning cruise amongst nine classic-BMW-owning friends has truly blossomed—see what I did there?!—into a full-scale independently organized annual automotive...
The Vehicles And Views Of The 2023 Cherry Blossom Run
BMW enthusiasts in the Washington, D.C. area recently enjoyed the 2023 Cherry Blossom Run. Read the full BimmerLife story here. To see photos of all of the vehicles in attendance, keep on scrollin’! Photos by Mike Bevels.
BMW Podiums And Fun Continue At Long Beach!
This year’s Grand Prix of Long Beach brought highs and, well, not so highs. For attending event and race fans of all ages, the Grand Prix weekend continues to be a one, two, or three day affair. While BMW podium finishes throughout the weekend kept those loyal to the...
Panning For Gold
In April of 2021, I was intrigued and inspired by Kyle van Hoften’s BimmerLife article “Capturing the Perfect Rolling Shot.” I’ve always enjoyed photographing cars, but up until this point my skills were limited to photos of stationary vehicles, and if I’m being honest, I hadn’t explored many of...
BMW’s Ultimate Driving Experience Electrifies Washington, D.C.
This past weekend, BMW’s traveling automotive event, the Ultimate Driving Experience (UDE), visited the parking lots of Washington D.C.’s soon-to-be-demolished RFK Stadium. If you’ve never heard of the UDE, BMW describes it as an “immersive driving experience led by BMW professional driving instructors,” hitting 26 coast-to-coast stops in the...
BimmerLife Rendezvous: Bourbon Trail Registration Open!
There is still time to join BMW CCA on a bucket-list adventure, but hurry because space is filling up quickly! Join us on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail for a weekend that will allow your five senses to experience it all. The weekend kicks off in downtown Louisville at the...
Lunch-Break Shenanigans
Have you ever needed to get away from your job in the middle of the day? Perhaps you’ve hit a roadblock, perhaps that roadblock is a coworker (every job has at least one), or perhaps you just need a change of scenery. If you answered “no,” I’m happy for...
The Magnificent Seven Of John Joseph
Klaus A. Schnitzer shares his experience of meeting BMW CCA John Joseph and his family of BMW fanatics with BimmerLife. Buckle up for glorious E38 7 Series content! At the 2021 Lime Rock Fall Festival, my wife and I were fascinated by a menacingly wonderful 2001 E38 740iL. This...
Collector Chassis Showcase: 1974 2002
Collector Chassis is a new online platform for enthusiasts, hobbyists, and collectors to showcase, spectate, buy, and sell vintage, classic and special-interest vehicles. Through our partnership with Collector Chassis, BMW CCA members may list vehicles for free, and benefit from reduced selling fees, in addition to managing their own...
BMW XM First Drive: Great Googly Moogly!
Okay, I was wrong: Maybe the world does need a steroidal all-wheel-drive BMW engineered from scratch by the Wizards of M. If you can’t get arrested in this thing, you aren’t really trying. The 483 horsepower from its S63 twin-turbo V8—slightly detuned from the same S63 in the X6...
Florida SunCoast Chapter Wins International Club Award
South Atlantic Regional Vice President Simone Harrison writes about a recent meetup of BMW CCA leaders and volunteers where BMW CCA Florida SunCoast Chapter was awarded with BMW Clubs International Council’s “2022 Club of the Year.” __________________________ At a recent meetup of BMW CCA chapter leaders and volunteers in...
My Lost Weekend
Due to the wonders of Facebook, I am being deluged by memories of where I was this weekend last year, two years ago, five years ago, thirteen years ago. They all point back to the same event: the Vintage in Asheville (formerly Vintage at the Vineyard, held in Winston-Salem),...
It’s A Bad Wheel Bearing! Or Is It?
In the repair world, there are “hard failures” and “soft failures.” Hard failures are things that instantly drag a car to a stop when they break. Broken ball joint? The worst type of hard failure—the front wheel folds under the fender like a broken ankle and you lose control...
Oh No! Not Another 2002 Air Conditioning Article! (Part III)
Last week, as part of my effort to transfer and modernize the Clardy a/c system that had been in my friend Jose’s totaled car into his newly purchased Pastellblau 2002, I finished installing the compressor and the parallel-flow condenser and fan. It was time to install the part that’s...
Oh No! Not Another 2002 Air Conditioning Article! (Part II)
Last week, I accepted a request from my friend and Vintage caravan compatriot Jose to swap the Clardy a/c system from his wrecked 2002 into the lovely Pastellblau car he recently purchased. I may have been reluctant to take on the job due to time, space, and liability issues,...
Oh No! Not Another 2002 Air Conditioning Article! (Part I)
My friend Jose, with whom I’ve caravanned back and forth to the Vintage in Asheville multiple times, recently bought a 2002 to replace the one he’d had for years that, sadly, got totaled last fall. The replacement is a beautiful car—a Pastellblau ’76 with a small-bumper conversion. There’s just...
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Hagerty that was something of a spring roll-out checklist—eleven things to check out before you jump into your winter-stored ride and head down the road with Born to be Wild blaring out of the ADS speakers. Of course, if you know...
