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Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Bayerische Motoren Werke AG said it delivered 109,923 vehicles in July, 13 percent less than in the same period a year before. BMW saw a 0.3 percent increase in sales of its Mini-branded cars, whilst Rolls-Royce vehicle sales fell 56 percent...

   

I'm proud of the fact that I generally do not get lost. If I have even a remote idea of where I need to wind up I can work my way to where I need to be. But even I will use something like Google Maps to reconnoiter someplace I haven't been to before to familiarize myself with the area...

I spotted a BMW Alpina on PCH on Friday. It wasn't the B3 BiTurbo featured in this article on Inside Line, but it sure was pretty.

Until around 1950, there was a Wild West-like attitude in the American automotive industry. It was a frontier to be conquered. Throughout automotive history, there have been something like 5,000 individual makers of cars and trucks in the world with about 3,500 of them being situated in the United States...

January and February have been busy so I haven't posted as much as I'd like.  The BMW is close to 54,000 miles and is running well.  I had the Inspection II service performed by an Indy mechanic two weeks ago.  The car received an oil change, fresh air and cabin filters and a clean bill of health.  This is my second year of owning the BMW.  So far so good.  The only unscheduled maintenance events were replacing the thermostat and one of the O2 sensors last summer.  Weather has been really cold.  Last month, our local chapter of the BMW Car Club of America had a winter driving school.  The morning started at -17 degrees Farenheit.  Lets just say I was happy I wasn't marshalling the course.  We were in the car or a class room.  Plus the rubber traffic cones would shatter on impact.  I was a little worried because some M54 engines have suffered from burst oil separators in cold weather. This is a side effect of short trips or people who let the car idle to warm up.  BMW has a retrofit kit available for cold weather climates.  My indy mechanic does a vacuum test and my car passed.  Hopefully, we are past the coldest days of winter. My car survived the event and ran really well.  Here are some You Tube Links from the event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8wJ7bjH1Qc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGHjiS1__xQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxRDnrHAc1U&feature=related I'm looking forward to this spring and summer season and plan on attending more driving events and autocrosses.  Speaking of driving, I took my kids to visit my parents in North Dakota for Presidents' Day Weekend.  I wanted to take the BMW but ended up taking my wife's Acura MDX.  More space for the kids, higher ground clearance for some of the rural roads, plus my concern about the lack of a BMW dealer or mechanic in my parents area.  While the car would have been fine driving there and back, I really didn't want to have the worry of dealing with a German car in a rural area.  The Acura was less of a worry as my parents' neighbor works for the Honda dealer in town.  I sometimes have my expensive services on our Hondas and the Acura done there as there labor rates are cheaper.  I'll try to keep posting more.  Hopefully as the weather warms, I will take some pictures plus discuss my restoration project of a 1987 Dodge Dakota.

What you can't see in this picture are the two other black BMWs in the far left lane. West L.A. is so predictable.

One of my first Matchbox models was an MG 1100. There was something about that little green four-door MG model that made a connection between me and MG. I bought my first MG over twenty years ago, and I still own it...

Consumer starting to play hardball with BMW on run-flat tire issues. A few members in the Forums have either cancelled, or are threatening to cancel, their new BMW orders, based on information garnered from this topic. The level of dissatisfaction with the run flat tires installed on BMWs, and the rather tepid response of some BMW dealerships to remedy the problem, or adequately service the tires, is causing a consumer backlash that seems to get stronger and stronger here at Edmunds and throughout Internet forums...

Odd isn't it.  A car that was the ubiquitous rental car in the 1980s and 90s and was never deemed worthy of a Car and Driver Top Ten award has inspired me to start a blog.  My wife's aunt purchased a new 1993 Mercury Topaz GS over 14 years ago.  It was white with a blue interior and blue half landau vinyl roof installed at the dealer.  She works as a traveling nurse and logged over 300,000 miles and didn't suffer a major mechanical failure.  The car had struck a deer and the Minnesota road salt took a toll on its body.  I saw it last summer at their house in Western Minnesota.  The Topaz was being sent to the wrecking yard.  She gushed about the car like it was a member of the family and how it never gave her any trouble.  I never had much enthusiam for Ford products after my Taurus had to have several mechanical components replaced at 77,000 miles (the transmission was the deal breaker and we replaced it with a Honda).  If a plebian Topaz could cross 100K three times could our BMW do it?  I suffer from automotive attention deficit disorder.  I like a variety of cars and have had the opportunity to purchase and trade every four to seven years or so.  This gets expensive as we always seem to have a car payment.  What if we could keep a car for 10 years or longer.  My parents did it.  My Dad's personal record is 18 years using a Dodge Dakota which he gave to me a couple of years ago.  My wife made a deal with me.  Buy a car that won't bore you after four years yet still is a practical family car.  So we purchased a 2003 BMW 325 two years ago, about three months shy of my 40th birthday.  So an allwheel drive station wagon is my midlife crisis car.  She said that I will need to drive the car until my 50th birthday.  So that means, I will own this alpine white wagon for another 8 years.  So here it goes.  My blog will chronical my journey with the BMW.  This should be fun and the car has a name: The Ultimate Grocery Getter.