Last week, I described getting the FrankenThirty down to The Vintage in Asheville (well, down to the host hotel and the Alpina exhibit at the BMW CCA Foundation in Greer SC) with the only problems being oil consumption and mouse smell that I thought I’d dealt with but was turbocharged when the fresh-air path through the cowl got soaked during the rainy drive down. I gushed so hard on how impressed I was with the car in particular and E30s in general that I wondered if I might be jinxing myself for the drive back.
Let me spoil the ending: No. Nothing happened.
It was downright boring by Hack Mechanic standards. I spent long stretches driving 80 to 85, and short stretches at 90. (BTW, just in case you’re interested, with the car still wearing its original 325is 3.73 diff, its not-supposed-to-be-there Eta engine spins 3500 at 80, and 4200 at 90. Very lazy by 2002 standards.)
But back to the event. This was The Vintage’s 21st year, so it’s now old enough to drink legally. If you don’t know, the event was originally titled “Vintage at the Vineyard” and was held around Memorial Day at a number of vineyard locations near Winston-Salem, as well as twice in the city’s old downtown. “V@V” began as a small gathering just for pre-E30 cars, but rapidly grew. As event organizer Scott Sturdy found venues with more space, he let E30s in, but drew the line at E36s, as that would likely explode the attendance. The whole “E36s will be allowed when hell freezes over” thing became a frequent joke in Vintage circles, but Scott always insisted that there was nothing cultural or generational about the restriction, that it was only about event size and some definition of “vintage” that made sense.
My E9 at my first Vintage in 2010 at Shelton Vineyards.
In 2016, Scott moved to Asheville and took the event there with him. The Asheville Clarion Airport Inn became the host hotel, and its parking lot that runs all the way around the building became as much of a destination as the actual event (more on that below). The Saturday event itself moved to a grassy field (the front lawn of the Hot Springs Resort & Spa) in the little town of Hot Springs north of Asheville, a 1:15 drive along some deliciously twisty roads. In 2020, The Vintage was cancelled due to COVID, and the 2021 Vintage was delayed until September, but beginning in 2022 it settled back into a predictable weekend-before-Memorial-Day rhythm. By 2024, the event had become so popular that Scott capped registration at 500 cars, and it still sold out. Still, it felt the same, with Scott’s oft-quoted dictum that it’s “a gathering, not a car show.” If you want a trophy, go somewhere else. Some heavily-patina’d first-timer project by someone who bought it and drove it and made it by the skin of his/her/their teeth is likely to generate as much attention as a flawless trailer queen (not that there’s anything wrong with flawless trailer queens).
Then, in September 2024, Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina. Asheville experienced heavy damage, but the little town of Hot Springs was essentially destroyed (this was covered in a recent issue of BimmerLife magazine). Due to the uncertainty of the rebuilding schedule, Scott had to make the difficult decision to find another venue for The Vintage. The event was moved to Hendersonville airport, about 15 miles from the Clarion hotel. This small single-airstrip general aviation facility was also hit hard by Helene, reportedly being under as much as 10 feet of floodwaters, but the roads and surrounding infrastructure weren’t destroyed in the way they were at Hot Springs. And the airport could hold more cars than the field at Hot Springs. With the added space, Scott increased the registration cap to 600 cars, and for the first time, allowed E36s to attend. As I said, there was always some (mostly) good-natured ribbing about holding back the tide of E36s, but hell freezing over notwithstanding, there was some worry that the caricatured E36 stanced suspensions, drift-car hooing, and woofy sound systems would change the laid-back vibe of The Vintage forever.
I’m here to tell you… it was absolutely fine. There were more young people this year (I turn 68 this summer, so everyone is a “young person”), both at the hotel and at the event itself, but fresh blood is rarely a bad thing, particularly if we oldsters can hook up a blood bag and do the vampire-youth thing while they’re passed out from heatstroke because we’re smart enough to wear stupid-looking big floppy hats and sunscreen and they’re not. (Sorry. I’m a bad person.) I encountered just one E36 pumping out music through a loud woofy system. I saw no cars that were stanced out to the point they’d wear their sidewalls in equal portion to their tread. I saw no one hoon an E36 anywhere remotely close to Mustang-sliding-into-parked-cars-level. And there’s always some population of loud exhausts cruising through the Clarion parking lot. This year the two most braaaaaaap-y ones I heard weren’t on an E36. They were on an E34 wagon, and, of all things, a 2002tii with a hot cam. It’s a strange and wonderful vintage BMW world.
Anyone who is a repeat Vintage offender knows that, while the Saturday event itself is wonderful, the most compelling part of The Vintage is actually what happens in the Clarion Hotel parking lot. Just walking around, running into your once-a-year Vintage friends (who are now, after all, a year older, and thus even more vintage), making split-second decisions on dinner, running into a second person, then a third, then maybe four more and all going out together, is our little slice of heaven. There are several restaurants within walking or stumbling distance, so the ability to have a few libations, then come back to the Clarion, walk through the parking lot, and have a few more with your bed just a few hundred feet away is just wonderful.
So let’s start in the parking lot. Last week I described Jeff Caplan and I getting Shanghai’d into replacing the alternator in Anita Patton’s Alpina 635CSi, but once that was done, I could be a normal BMW-loving schmo like everyone else.
I TOLD you last week that Odometer Gears’ Jeff Caplan had as much hands-on wrenching time as I did with Anita Patton’s Alpina. Lissa Rickman had the photo to prove it.
People begin setting up camp in the Clarion parking even before the sun goes down. Photo by Lissa Rickman.
Sorry for the jittery pic, but it does connote the extent to which the parking lot of the Clarion was absolutely rocking the night before the event.
In the photo above, there’s something important going on on the left that’s masked by a small crowd. Earlier in the evening, I overheard a fellow saying to someone that he had something special in his trailer that he was going to bring out when the moment was right. I didn’t think much of it until, about an hour later, a pre-war BMW I couldn’t identify took a lap through the parking lot, then came to a stop. It was a 1949 321 owned by Brian Kinports of the CCA Sunshine Chapter. With the nighttime debut and its Malaga and butter-yellow paint, it looked like something out of a BMW-centric Dick Tracey movie. A pic is shown below, but you can watch the video of my wait-did-this-just-really-happen astonishment here on YouTube. Brian explained the car’s story to the transfixed crowd. BMW had a plant in Eisenach, part of what became East Germany after WWII. Car production stopped in 1942 and the plant was repurposed to build aircraft engines for the Luftwaffe. After WWII, BMW wanted to resume production in the Eisenach factory, but it was in the Russian-occupied zone. Plus, there was some belief the factory would be dismantled and sent to Russia for war reparations. The plant received some monies to retool and build a small handful of cars (about six). This worked out well, so the plant stayed open for many years producing cars after the war. Brian’s 1949 321 is badged as a BMW, but later, BMW in Munich sued the Eisenach plant and forced them to stop using the BMW name and blue-and-white roundel emblem. This suit was settled in ‘52 and required Eisenacher to stop using BMWs name. The cars then changed from the traditional BMW blue-and-white badge to a red-and-white “EMW” badge (Eisenacher MotorenWerk). (Thanks to Brian Kinports for this description.)
Brian Kinports’ 1949 321 makes its dramatic “soft opening” nocturnal debut.
On Saturday morning, the cars poured out of the Clarion Inn and other nearby hotels and headed the 15 miles southeast to the Hendersonville airport. The cover photo at the beginning of this article of Vintage volunteer and major-league 2002 guy Jason Gipson’s well-known 2002 “MZEHN” was shot with my phone out the window of the FrankenThirty as I pulled into the airport, as the contrast between the car’s beautiful paint and the weathered building was too good not to try. The grassy interior section of the airfield was soggy from the previous day’s rain, so volunteers were directing all cars to park on both sides of the airport’s runway. This meant that, instead of the field at Hot Springs where cars could stream in quickly and be parked in rows, it took a while to get everyone in and positioned, but the 937-ft runway became filled nearly end-to-end. (Scott adds that it was still raining the morning of the event when he and the volunteers were doing last-minute preparations. “We were setting up to Jeff Caplan (whose 635CSi race car has speaker towers on the trunk lid) blasting “Singing in the Rain” while it was still sprinkling, then “Good Day Sunshine” when the sun came out.”)
But once things were underway, it didn’t rain, it was warm but not beastly hot, there was a nearly endless walkway of vintage BMWs to ogle, along with vendor tables and food trucks. What’s not to love? Below is a smattering of what caught my eye. About half the photos are from long-time Vintage attendee Lissa Rickman, who is a much better photographer than I am. (Thanks Lissa!)
One of them thar interloper E36s (just kidding) comes down the runway.
Brian Kinsports’ remarkable 1949 321 in daylight. With that butter-yellow paint, I thought that Warren Beatty was going to show up as Dick Tracey. Photo by Lissa Rickman.
The nose-first shot of the 321. Ah, when BMW built cars whose kidneys weren’t large enough to drive a motorcycle through. Photo by Lissa Rickman.
I prefer E9s to hew pretty close to their original elegant lines and trim, but this certainly was a menacing look. Photo by Lissa Rickman.
I loved the color of this E34. Dark wheels and windows aren’t usually my thing, but it all just worked.
My friend Lee Perrault, her niece Monica, and her original-owner 2002 “Bean.”
I see this car every year at The Vintage, and never tire of it. It’s just so all-in.
This 2000tilux and its engine compartment are a thing of beauty,
See? I told you.
This metallic-brown 1981 Euro 732i was phat.
Like I said.
I’d seen this home-built 2002 wagon a few years back, but the trailer was a nice addition.
How can you not love a factory 2002 Turbo with the reverse script on the air dam so when you’re on the Autobahn you can read in your rear view mirror what’s about to eat you?
A particularly tasty E9 coupe and it’s “don’t ever let the Hack Mechanic” sit in it white interior.
I swear that I could get that dirty just thinking about it.
Oh the E24 and E31 goodness.
I had to admire the owner of this E30 M3 who left it in its failed-clear-coat glory.
Obviously, to have this show, the runway at the Hendersonville Airport wasn’t active the day of the event. There were several small planes parked one row over, but I don’t know if they were operational or not; I heard someone say that they were tagged when the flood waters came through, but I don’t know if it’s true or not. There were also probably two dozen cars, mostly BMWs, that also appeared to be flood-damaged. I heard someone say (again, apologies for hearsay information) that they were owned by the owner of the airport or someone associated with him, and folks there for The Vintage were free to look at them and make offers if they were interested.
Although there were several small planes at the airport, I didn’t know whether they were operational. Photo by Lissa Rickman.
The one sign of airborne activity was that helicopter rides were available, and many Vintage attendees took advantage.
This small yellow copter was a frequent sight in the skies over The Vintage. Photo by Lissa Rickman.
At about 3:00, the exodus began. Since it wasn’t everyone-all-at-once, it didn’t have the traffic backup of the morning’s influx. Then, shortly after I got back to the Clarion Inn, the power in the entire area (including nearby restaurants) went out, leaving hundreds of hotel guests scrambling. After a great deal of milling around, grumbling stomachs, and phone calls to restaurants to find ones that were open, about 12 of us went to a delightful brew pub with outdoor seating and a bluegrass band. It was a little spontaneous slice of heaven.
Most years, Saturday night in the Clarion parking lot isn’t nearly as hopping as Friday night, as some portion of the attendees leave the event and immediately begin the trek home. But the combination of the blackout, the increased number of attendees, and perhaps the younger demographic turned the odd situation into a big surreal party in the dark. When the lights in the parking lot suddenly went on, people seemed equal parts relieved and a bit disappointed that the real world had returned.
It may not be obvious from this pic, but in the dark, this place was LIT.
In the morning, my road-trip partner Jose Rosario and I began the long trek home. I removed the packing tape that had been blocking the flow of fresh air through the cowl vents and hoped that the rain-ignited mouse smell had abated.
Oh, but wait! What about the long-time pranking that my “friend” Paul Wegweiser subjects me to, the up-to-2022 summary of which is listed here? Last year when I drove down in Hampton, my 50,000-mile purchased-from-the-original-owner survivor 2002, Paul told me that the car was so lovely and original that he wasn’t going to do anything to it. I’m not a sap, so I didn’t believe him, but I actually was spared. This year, though, with the FrankenThirty’s consummate ratty-ness, Paul might have felt justified if his “prank” was that he lit it on fire. At a minimum, since I’d talked about at the event and posted on social media about how the mouse smell exploded on the drive down when the fresh-air path through the cowl got wet, I expected that I’d begin the drive back and encounter gag-worthy eau de rodent, and find the cowl filled with live (or dead ones). The funny thing was, Paul came up to me on Saturday morning at breakfast, sat down, put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me, and with a dripping level of mock sincerity, told me that he wanted me to know that he wasn’t going to do anything to my car this year. Then he did the same on my Facebook page.
I had it in writing.
This, of course, was the ultimate in Wegweiser-Vintage psychological terrorism. I did not believe him for a second.
On Sunday morning, when I walked out of my hotel room to the FrankenThirty to begin packing it, Paul and two friends of his were milling around suspiciously close to the car. I ignored them, hopped in the car, and drove it around to the back of the hotel to the entrance nearest my room. I then returned it to the front of the hotel, nearest where breakfast was, for a quick departure. When I did, I noticed a TV dinner lying on the asphalt next to the space where I’d been parked, but thought nothing of it. Paul then approached me, saying that he noticed that I’d left my iPod cable hanging out of the passenger door, and as something between prank and performance art, he jammed the 3.5mm plug end into a “Hungry Man” TV dinner I assume he bought from the refrigerator at the hotel reception desk. Why? Because he’s, well, Paul. I drove the 900 miles home still expecting the other shoe, or mouse, or something, to drop. Or my iPod to blare the “Hungry Man” theme song. It did not.
Don’t ask me to explain what goes on in that man’s mind.
The drive home was event-free. With air flow and lack of rain, the mouse smell dissipated to pre-trip levels. The oil burning, though, did not; I added about 3 1/2 quarts during the 2069-mile round trip. On my next oil change, I’ll try switching from 10W40 to 20W50 to see if heavier oil lessens it.
Aside from the FrankenThirty completely surpassing every expectation I had, the biggest surprise was that, with all the work I put into having working air conditioning, the weather was such that I didn’t use it that often to keep cool. It got hot during the drive back from Greer, SC, to Asheville, NC, after I attended the Alpina exhibit at the BMW CCA Foundation’s Ultimate Driving Museum, and there were a few isolated pockets of heat on other days. And I certainly appreciated having it during the drenching first-day drive down when it was indispensable for keeping the windshield defogged. But the last day’s drive home was cold enough that, even with long pants, I cracked the heat on.
Happy owner, happy car, both home.
So, FrankenThirty, you rock. Whether this is the start of a beautiful friendship or whether it’ll be like the trip to The Vintage in 2019 with Bertha my resurrected 2002 wedding car where, after that one big road trip, the car has barely been driven, I don’t know. It’s too soon to tell. My heart tells me to shower the car with goodies, get to the root of the mouse smell in the cowl once and for all, replace what I know is a contaminated headliner though I’m not sure how much of that is wafting into the car, and look for a well-priced “i” engine to make the car what it once was and deserves to be. But my head says that, with the back-2/3-of-a-facelifted-car-and-nose-of-a-pre-facelift-car thing, doing anything other than the minimum to keep it running is just lighting money on fire. And besides, the Eta engine not only worked absolutely fine on the drive down, I actually enjoyed the way it performed. Maybe wait until it drops a valve (it’s unlikely to break the new timing belt) and then look at what’s necessary to drop an S52 into it. Now there’s a plan.
And the big wrap-up: Our beloved event The Vintage turned 21 and was in no way ruined by hanging out and drinking (legally this time) with the E36 kids. I heard a few gripes about the long wait getting into the Hendersonville Airport on Saturday morning, and how the long runway of cars made for more walking than when they’re in multiple rows at Hot Springs, and how that site had more shade than the wide-open airport. But while I was driving home, my iPod (unruined by its Hungry Man encounter) shuffled into The Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” and when I heard the lyric “Take a sad song, and make it better,” my eyes teared up. Because I realized that that’s what Scott Sturdy did. Because of the hurricane, the Hot Springs site was unavailable (and let’s face it, there are so many more important things in this world than where a car show I mean a gathering is held), and Scott had to find another venue. He did. He pulled it off. He took a sad song, and made it better. It was wonderful. Huge thanks again to Scott Sturdy and all the volunteers for another wonderful Vintage!
—Rob Siegel
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Rob’s newest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic, is available here on Amazon, as are his seven other books. Signed copies can be ordered directly from Rob here.
Tags: E36 allowed Vintage
