BMW banned me from their HQ for this...

there was a police waiting on the other side of that corner and we were so sideways that I was looking at him at the side of the road through the front [Music] glass everyone nowadays goes crazy for BMW E30 M3s and E36 M3s but it's easy to forget that when those cars were new they didn't sell very well in fact in Canada where I'm from they were lucky to sell 50 of them in a year a lot of the cars would sit on the lot for the for over a year before they moved the head of bmwm division came over from Germany and spoke to the American side of things and they wanted to see if it would be possible to uh to bring the E36 M3 to North America particularly in the United States and after the to a certain degree Fiasco of the E30 M3 the Americans were not too amable to the idea of having a car on the way back to Germany he made a stop in Canada and in Canada he happened to find a knowing year in a gentleman named Tom plinski Tom was involved with BMW Canada and he saw the value and the possibility of bringing the M3 to Canada so whereas Canada got or the United States got 1995 model year cars in 1994 Canada actually got 45 E36 M3s and they were done through a like a Skunk Works project within BMW Canada led by Tom these cars were imported using a Norwegian spec exemption that could be done under low volumes so the cars were primarily pre-sold from my understanding 43 cards were pre-old and they just ordered another two to make an even 45 through a lot of back room channels and negotiating and fixing problems on the Fly they managed to bring the E36 M3 in a Euros speec with the European engine that had more power six throttle bodies the proper unneutered European version managed to find its way to North America and it's when the Americans found out through from my understanding in an article that was a a week they found out that the Canadians were doing this they were like well now we want the M3 but the European one was too expensive so they ended up finding a way of making a US version which turned out to be wildly successful for the United States but that didn't happen until 1995 so in 1994 all of these cars as I said 43 of them were pre-ordered and they started at a base price of if I remember correctly it was $59,900 Canadian that gave you a car with no sunroof no radio fabric seats and then the cars were all individually ordered and optioned so you could add quite a bit to them things like leather seats sunroof CD player there was a lot of options what could be done to the cars but some of them were ordered in a rather stripped fashion and in fact just last week I had the opportunity to spend my time around one of these 45 cars I was at a BMW car club event and the chief instructor of the driving school happens to have one as a personal vehicle of his and he pointed out something that was incredibly cool when they were doing these cars they were doing a lot of stuff and they were almost sourcing some of the stuff locally and the owner's manual of the car is leather it's embossed it has the M3 on the front and on the back side it has an embossing of the Canadian clothing company Roots which is known for its leather goods and and other sporting apparels so they obviously use the Canadian company the Outsource it to make the uh the pouch which is a really really cool piece of canadiana so with the M3 now coming to North America and firmly established it's now 1997 and I am a member of the Trillium chapter of the BMW car club of Canada and we are invited a group of us are invited to visit BMW of Canada on a Saturday and to test drive all of their new cars what could possibly go wrong you get a bunch of car enthusiasts being given keys to brand new BMWs and told to go out and have a good time BMW of Canada had laid out a route for us that was on residential secondary streets highway so you could really get a chance to experience the car naturally you let a whole bunch of enthusiasts drive the cars and it's not long before the Neighbors start complaining about BMWs being driven at high speed in the area I find myself in a brand new red 1997 M3 with my brother beside me and and we're driving along and we have a friend of ours behind us and this is one of those dumb things you do when you're young I wanted to show my friend how much faster I could go than him and he was in a 540i I was in the M3 We Were In This Very secluded Road straight piece of road it was about I don't know half a mile 3/4 of a mile long and at the end of the road there was a tight tight right-hander 90° and it would lead into a growingly residential area prior to that it was essentially an abandoned area he's behind me and I decide to see how fast this thing will go and accelerate so we get to over 200 km an hour 130 M hour and and I'm pulling away from them and we have this 90° Corner coming up and so what I do traction control off break at the last possible minute down through the gears and there is quite a bit of dust in dirt on the road and I just snap the car sideways and I am just full Tokyo Drift through this corner as I said it wasn't long before people called the police to talk about BMWs being driven High speeded in the area and lo and behold I was the next one to to drive by there was a police waiting on the other side of that corner and we were so sideways that I was looking at him at the side of the road through the front glass as I'm sliding past him I already see his rear tire spinning he's coming after us straighten the car out and this is where I made a bad decision I made the decision at that point I'm not stopping I'm going my brother the voice of reason tells me there's a police officer stop and my media thought is no I'm going I accelerate down the road we' only gone a couple of hundred yards in front of me is this big water truck and he's negotiating a corner and I literally pass the water truck on the wrong side I get in front of them I go a few hundred more yards I have a clear view to the entrance to the highway and then I smarting up it's a dumb thing I shouldn't be doing this I'm going to stop I pull over at the side of the road throw my fourways on roll the window down and I know it's coming and I look in the mirror and this police officer is shaking his adrenaline was up he was ready for the Chase and now all that Energy's got to go somewhere and I'm that somewhere and I just remember looking at my brother he kind of had his head down windows rolled down I looked to my left and this guy is huge all I have in my face is a belt buckle and the first words out of his mouth never going to forget them he said don't you ever try running from the police again and he was absolutely right he said I already knew you were coming I already had your license plate number because what had happened was people in the area had already reported all of the cars that had been driven at high speed leading up to me being the first one on the scene he asks of course how did I get this car who does it belong to and then he asks me for my driver's license and he tells me I don't know what to charge you with and he goes back to his car and while he's in this Cruiser figuring out what to do I'm looking in the mirror and two or three other cars stop of Neighbors in the area to talk to him about BMWs being driven in highs speeded in the area so I am taking it for everybody and that's the way it goes sometimes as my friend once told me sometimes you got to put your big boy pants on and accept it so he comes back to me writes me up on a lurid charge dangerous driving luckily back then in the late 1990s it wasn't the penalty that it is today now that would be a $10,000 fine uh 7-Day uh impounding of the car and 7-Day loss of your driver's license so he escorts me back to BMW of Canada I pull up and with a cruiser and police officer goes talks with the guys at BMW of Canada and to be honest the guys at BMW of Canada couldn't have been cooler they came back to us and they said don't worry about it they know the way to our place have a good time but just you know try to keep it down a little bit moving forwards so I got this massive ticket and then I I hired an agent to try to help me out with this one and I really wish I would have known Mark gold from the Ticket Clinic cuz he probably would have helped me out on this one when I showed up at the courtroom there were two different couples that had shown up taken their day off of work to make sure that act as witnesses to make sure that you know those people that are driving BMWs on that day were going to get in all the trouble of the world if I remember correctly it was it was knocked down to failure to remain in Lane but it was still a pretty hefty fine and and a decent loss of points that took quite a few years to clean off of my record when one of the ironic twists of Fate that happened afterwards though was that following year when they opened up the same event to invite the BMW Club of Canada the executives of the BMW Club of Canada told me that it would probably be best if I don't come back because of uh what I did last year I didn't really care for that too much because the fact is everybody was doing it I just sucked it up and took it and didn't didn't drag anyone down with me on the day of that event I found myself in and around the area of BMW of Canada and wouldn't you guess that when I was driving there I got passed at incredibly high speed on the right side by the two Executives of the BMW car club driving a zed3 well in excess enjoying their day at BMW of Canada for a limited time glossett best ever DIY ceramic coating deal is back last year too many of you ordered it and it broke his sight for a little while but now just the first 2,000 of you can get glossett $150 bottle of graphine ceramic coating for just $69.99 and you get a free $50 bottle of their ceramic detail spray which makes the application a breeze so click right now at the link in the description below to get [Music] yours

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 130,491

Keywords: vinwiki, car stories, automotive, car enthusiast, storytelling, car trek, ed bolian, vehicle history, carfax, car guy, automotive adventure, exotic cars, supercars, car story

Id: -Q0FxzqEFPU

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2023