RECENT ARTICLES
Detailed Photos: BMW M850i xDrive On Display At Le Mans
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In case you missed the barrage of social-media posts, the 24 Hours of Le Mans was held this weekend at the storied Sarthe circuit, and for BMW, this year marked a return to the legendary race after a seven-year hiatus. For some context on that gap, the team has...
Resurrecting Bertha: The Extraction
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Having repurchased Bertha, the 1975 2002 I brought up from Austin in 1984, drove away from my wedding in on Labor Day of that same year, modified out the ying-yang, then sold to my friend Alex in the early 1990s because our just-purchased house in Newton had only a...
Father And Son: Grand Touring In The Touring
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By Kevin Albino: There I was, cruising down the Autobahn toward Austria with my dad fast asleep in the passenger seat of our 1988 BMW 320iT—yes, the E30 Touring. Don’t pinch yourself, you might be dreaming, I thought. It was the last week of my work-study term abroad, and...
BMW CCA Club Racing Runs With NASCAR At NJMP
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Will Vanjonack in a C-Modified E36 M3 started last and quickly carved his way through the pack to win the feature sprint at the New Jersey Chapter’s June Tire Rack BMW CCA Series club race at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Club Racing ran as a support series to the...
M8 GTE Shows Promise But Finishes Twelfth At Le Mans
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Both BMW Team MTEK M8 GTEs ran in the top three in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but in the end one of the cars finished twelfth in class and the other exited the race after an accident. The cars had qualified twelfth and thirteenth in class, but...
BMW Challenges World’s Best With New 8 Series
It’s finally here; the gauntlet has been thrown down. After a twenty-year absence of a true range-topping series, the new M850i xDrive has been revealed in an elegant yet imposing shape that seems to champion the best the brand has to offer, the automotive embodiment of a world-class athlete...
BMW Group Sells 1,000,000 Cars In First Five Months Of 2018
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2018 is proving to be quite a year for BMW, even in the midst of multiple range-topping and mainstay model introductions and uncertain global economic conditions. Regardless of what’s going on with international markets or the national political scene, demand for new BMW, MINI, and Rolls-Royce vehicles appears largely...
Next-Gen 3 Series Expectations
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2018 has been a busy year for BMW, with more than a few new models having been introduced during just the first six months. Between the new X2, X5 and range-topping M850i, it seems the news just keep coming, in the form of one world-premier or testing update after...
Shell Fill-Up Friday Winner: Phoenix Lancelot!
, , Aftermarket, Contest, Fill Up Friday, Instagram, Shell
Congratulations to Everglades Chapter member Phoenix Lancelot, our first two-time champion of Shell Fill-Up Friday! Lancelot won back in April with a shot of his 540i, and then locked in another $25 Shell gift card this week with a follow-up post from his local Shell station. So yes, keep...
Oktoberfest: Shell TSD Rallyists Will Win $1,500 In Fuel Cards!
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Rallyists competing in the Oktoberfest 2018 Shell TSD Rally will take home more than the spectacular scenic attractions of western Pennsylvania. Shell has again stepped up their support of the event with Shell fuel gift cards for the top three finishing teams in each of the three rally classes:...
BMW, MIT Produce First 3D-Printed Inflatable Material
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Two years worth of collective work between the BMW Design Department and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Self-Assembly Laboratory has made liquid-printed pneumatic material a reality. Conceived as a substance that can “self-transform, adapt and morph from one state to another,” according to BMW, the new material and underlying concepts...
Membership Drive: Shell Gift Card Winners Announced!
, , Community, BMW CCA, Contests, gift cards, Membership Drive, Prizes, referrals, Shell
During the month of May, members had the chance to earn a $50 Shell gift card by making the top-five list of referring members for the month. And that’s on top of the already long list of awards and prizes available to referring members! Without further ado, here is...
BMW CCA “Car Of Your Dreams” Raffle Returns With M5 Competition, M2 Competition
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The BMW Car Club of America’s famous raffle has produced more than 123 winners over the last seventeen years (not including flash drawings and other raffle giveaways), and it returns this year with another incredible roster of cars fresh from BMW’s latest series of high-performance releases. Tickets are just...
Video: Check Out The New Z4 At Speed!
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Thanks to Roundel correspondent Tom Plucinsky, who is also employed by BMW NA, we were able to get a sneak peek at the third generation of BMW’s Z4 roadster, code G29. This is the car that has been jointly developed by BMW and Toyota; BMW gets the roadster, and...
Classifieds Challenge: S54-Powered M Coupe Versus M6 Gran Coupé
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Last week we compared two iconic investment-ready M cars whose prices (for nice examples) are about even: the E46 M3 and the E92 M3. This week we also have two M cars, but for distinctly different purposes—and as always, we’re pulling our examples from the BMW CCA Classifieds. One...
‘Personal Mover’ Concept Coming To BMW Group Facilities Worldwide
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Designed as a one-person means of transit for covering short distances within an operating facility, the Personal Mover Concept seems like a welcome addition for BMW manufacturing employees, some of whom walk up to seven miles a day during the course of their shift. Conceived and built completely in-house...
BMW First To Market With Wireless Charging For PHEVs
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In a move anticipated for at least the last several months and more than a few years in the making, BMW has become the first automaker to transform wireless charging for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles from concept into reality. Production of the Inductive Charging Station, which comprises two separate...
Classifieds Challenge: Mystic Blue E46 M3 Versus Alpine White E92 M3
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For last week’s Classifieds Challenge, we examined one of the many intricacies of the BMW vintage market: the exquisite—but appreciating—1M Coupe and its contemporary replacement, the M2 Competition. While it will be interesting to see what that market does in the next few years, there are some other comparisons...
Bimmerfest 2018 Saturday Photo Recap: Fenders, Wheels, Passion
BimmerLife has been at Bimmerfest 2018 to bring you on-the-ground updates of some of the wildest, rowdiest, and most interesting BMWs at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. The famous two-day headliner event continues tomorrow as well, but you can check out a brief photo gallery from Saturday below....
San Diego Chapter’s Clean-Car Contest Caters To All Kinds
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Every year in late May, a modest group of attendees and a small but very special collection of BMWs congregates near the shores of the San Diego Bay, in Spanish Landing Park. The word small might not be entirely accurate, as the metal on display is always impressive in...
BMW CCA Booth Car Wins “Battle Of The Bimmers” Best In Show
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Bimmerfest had some wild cars this year, from bagged F80s to E30 and E36 sport-utes and hardcore E92 M3 track cars, but Best in Show for the judged “Battle of the Bimmers” category went to a surprising—but certainly well-qualified—example. (If you haven’t checked out our gallery from Bimmerfest 2018,...
BMW CCA Car-Of-Your-Dreams Raffle 2018!
Ticket sales for the annual BMW CCA Car Of Your Dreams Raffle are set to begin on Friday, June 1, at 10:00 a.m. EDT. This year members will have the chance to win the Grand Prize 2019 BMW M5 Competition, First Prize BMW M2 Competition, or one of several...
ICON: 50 Years Of The 2002 Opens In South Carolina
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Last weekend played host to The Vintage in Asheville, North Carolina, and while we (or Rob Siegel) will get to that once the BMW community has recovered, there was another event worthy of mention tied into the weekend. Just 90 minutes south of Asheville, in Greer, South Carolina, the...
Testing Tires With The Best Girls In Town
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By Lou Ann Shirk: I was humbled to be selected as one of 21 female auto enthusiasts in the U.S. invited to attend the Women In Drive three-day tire school hosted by Michelin USA in Greenville, South Carolina. Johnny Valencia and his team pulled together an incredible event; they...
Shell Fill-Up Friday Winner: Mike Sun!
, , Community, Contests, Fill Up Friday, Instagram, Shell
Congratulations to LA Chapter member Mike Sun, our latest Shell Fill-Up Friday winner! Pictured is his Mineral White E92 M3 with carbon roof, Evolve tune, Akrapovic Evolution exhaust, and Michelin PS4S tires. Mike has been a member for ten years, and says he joined for the great high-performance driving...
Resurrecting Bertha: The Extraction
, , Aftermarket
Having repurchased Bertha, the 1975 2002 I brought up from Austin in 1984, drove away from my wedding in on Labor Day of that same year, modified out the ying-yang, then sold to my friend Alex in the early 1990s because our just-purchased house in Newton had only a...
Resurrecting Bertha: Part One Of Hundreds
, , Aftermarket
I am a man to whom context is important; this is why some of my stories have a long arc. This one goes back 34 years, and it’s still unfolding. And the new part of the arc is likely to be like a roller coaster, so strap in. I...
The Vintage 2018: The Silver Shark Stumbles
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Last week I described the road trip to the Vintage, concentrating on caravan member Jordan Berube’s belt-related cooling-system troubles with the Black Shark, the 1985 635CSi I’d just sold him the week before. With the rash cojones that come with youth, he took the unsorted car on the 2,000-mile...
The Black Shark Rises, Part II: The Trip To The Vintage
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Two weeks ago, I described resurrecting the Black Shark—a black-on-black 1985 635CSi five-speed I got for free from my son’s girlfriend’s father—and selling the running but unsorted car for a great price to Jordan Berube (aka the Kid. I call him the Kid because he is a kid, but...
E12/E24 Clutch Master Cylinder Replacement
, , Aftermarket
I ended last week’s piece on a cocky note, literally taunting the Automotive Powers That Be by saying that I expected to find no problems while sorting out Sharkey the ’79 Euro 635CSi for the 2,000-mile round trip to the Vintage in Asheville. You don’t do that sort of...
Valve Adjustment On BMW Single-Cam Engines
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First, to close out last week’s piece on the Black Shark: The $25 Chinese-made viscous fan clutch I ordered on eBay arrived. I installed it, and it solved the hot-running problem. The gentleman (Jordan Berube) who’d PayPalled me a $100 deposit came by on Saturday; he loved the car,...
