Some years ago, in 1990, when I graduated from law school, I bought myself a graduation present, a Burberry trench coat. I could say that I did it because they had a reputation of being high quality and lasting forever… but that would be a load of mule fritters. I bought it because it was the last one in the store, a weird size (48XL), and on the clearance rack with a double discount.
Also, I bought it because even then I was pretty damn bougie.1
As it turned out, on a cost-per-wearing basis, it was one of the best things I’ve ever purchased. It made me look better than I usually look, more experienced than I was, and more competent than I ever expected to be. It also kept me warm when the idiots on the other side of cases booked January depositions in Minnesota or Calgary, and dry in the middle of monsoons in Buffalo and New Orleans. It also did a great job keeping me dry when I had to dig a trench to drain our backyard after the drains became clogged and the snake was too short to clear the blockage.
Now, here we are 35 years later, and after innumerable flights stuffed into overhead compartments, it’s still in great shape. Except the buckle; it’s leather-wrapped and dried out, and it has started to come apart at the stitching.2
As I’ve often said, “You gotta have a guy.” (For those of you playing catch-up, that is expertise-specific, not gender-specific.) Basically, you need to know whom to call—generally an independent specialist—to get a particular task accomplished when you don’t know enough to do it yourself. So I called my upholstery guy, who happens to be a woman. While she was sympathetic, she was up to her eyeballs in Connolly leather, coordinating interiors on three vintage Rolls-Royces for a single owner. Also, this was below her level of interest, even though she was too nice to say it. She suggested a shoe-repair guy, a guy I didn’t have.
So I went looking. Yelp said one local guy was competent, but personality-impaired. What can I say? Yelp was half right. When I picked up the belt a week later, I saw that he had just taken mismatched leather and glued it over the half of the buckle with the deteriorating stitching. He did offer to do it again when he saw my face, but when I picked up the following week, it was wasn’t any better; while the buckle was entirely covered in the same-yet-mismatched leather, this time it was glued rather than stitched, and lumpier than a Shar Pei’s eyebrow. Fail.
So I called Burberry. Forty-eight hours and $100 later, I had a new belt with a perfectly matched stitched leather buckle. So the total maintenance costs for the coat have been amortized at less than three dollars a year; the eventual number will be even lower if I can figure out how long the new belt and buckle should last. By any definition, I count this one as a win.
And at this point, we transition from the Men’s Fashion portion of the column to what you actually care about: car stuff. There is a corollary to “You gotta have a guy,” to wit: “Sometimes the guy turns out to be the dealer.” Fortunately, BMW is one of the manufacturers offering replacement parts for older cars, or at least a lot of them.3
Underbody plastic for an E36 M3? Sure, they have it. But what about the stuff they don’t have? That’s one of the times you gotta have a guy.
The other time you gotta have a guy is when you need someone with expertise to keep you from doing stupid stuff on your own.
When one of TWUBBL’s keys stopped working because its battery was dead and it wouldn’t hold a charge, I did have a guy. And because he’s been dealing with BMW electrical issues for decades, he knew exactly what to do: Take your registration with the VIN to your local dealer, ask for the club discount with your membership number, and hand over your credit card. A week later, pick up a new key pre-coded to your vehicle, spend 45 seconds introducing your key to the car and the car to the key, and then drive away. Amortized cost? Assuming you get another 18 years from the key, less than four dollars a year in dealer-based repairs.
There is another option. Find the repair video on the Internet, and fiddle-fart around with an X-Acto knife, battery, soldering gun, and glue when you’d rather be doing almost anything else car-related. By all means, if you enjoy electrical repair, go for it. The repair itself is neither complicated nor extraordinarily time-consuming.
Me? Nope. I’m still looking for my new favorite entrance ramp, and I have a few more local canyons from Butler Motorcycle Maps I want to run.
Or maybe that’s just not you, either. You could insouciantly drape a stylish coat over your shoulders, invite your equally chic Significant Other to do the same, climb into your BMW, and head for the Michelin-starred restaurant nearest you. Or zip into an aphrodisiacally mangy hoodie, grab a few people you like, and meet over some chips, guacamole, burritos, and a Modelo or two at your local cantina.
When your amortized dealer-based repair costs are less than a Happy Meal, you have a lot of options.
- And that was before Burberry became stunningly, overwhelmingly, and unapologetically bougie—and stupid expensive (as opposed to merely Holy Crap expensive).
- Much like me.
- Unlike Mercedes-Benz. At their Classic Center, if you have a VIN, they have—or can manufacture—pretty much anything. While some of the obscure parts for rare models cost as much as a new Mercedes, many are surprisingly affordable.
