Jealousy is all relative, I suppose, but the beginnings of my story and relationship with my now 1991 BMW M3 began fairly abruptly in the winter of 2013, when a local car forum friend picked up a new-to-him 1988 Zinnoberrot on Natur S14B23 powered BMW M3.
    Showing up at his house in a dark December evening just to see the body arches, the engine and character of the car instilled an innate need for me to own one myself.
    Picking up leads from his shopping adventure, I called on every M3 he passed on, looked at all of the specialist forums, posted want to buy ads on all the major owner forums. Several leads filtered out from that process, but ultimately cars that ended up being in my price range were all engine swap cars. Nothing too surprising as an S14 car was bringing about $4-5k more than any S52 car was in early 2014.
    After a long back and forth with a 1989 DiamondSchwarz owner about an S38B36 swapped car with timing chain rattle, an S52 swapped Zinnoberrot car in Illinois and countless overpriced S14 cars being presented, the only one to get back to me with a somewhat reasonable offering was a man named Michael out of Houston, TX.
    Michael turned out to be one of the other folks my local friend had talked to before ultimately buying his 88 Zinno in Dallas. This Houston based car had quite a history, but it was essentially a late production 1991 Brilliant Red on black M3 with just 112,000 indicated miles. Photos coming down in a trickle with anticipation slowing the perceived connection speed down to the old 33.6 modem days revealed what looked to be an S52B32US engine and ZF transmission under the hood, O.Z. Mito wheels and some sort of lowering kit. Michael mentioned that even though the engine was dressed up to look like an S52, that it was in fact a 1998 528i M52B28 and transmission, since his plan was originally to turbocharge the car and the 84mm blocks held boost better. That story checked out, and I already had plans to change the engine in the car, so I proceeded on asking questions about the car. Michael mentioned that the paint was a 2-stage PPG respray of mediocre quality, the interior was in excellent condition and that the car’s right front control arm was bad. Not bad enough to avoid driving the car home, but was significant enough to cause cupping on the tires repeatedly.
    Weeks of chatting turned in to a month while he was being convinced by his bride to be to let the car go, helping the wedding fund, and his own purchase of his father’s Guards red Porsche 964 911 C2.
    Eventually, 5 weeks in, he finally emailed me the ‘Ok, let’s proceed’. I already had checks written out, and flights picked out, so no more than 30 minutes later, my trip to get this car was planned for just 7 days later.

Excitement levels counting down to Christmas or a Birthday as a child didn’t compare to what I was feeling the week leading up to and the 4AM wake up to catch a red eye the morning of actually buying this mythical unicorn.

McDonalds breakfast at MSP terminal 1, tacos on the one and a half hour DFW layover and insane confusion in the Reagan airport of Houston lead me outside to a concrete jungle and a bright red BMW M3 sitting in the pickup zone with the auxiliary electric fan blazing at full speed in the 103-degree heat.

Meeting Michael face to face and fighting mid day weekday traffic on the way to his bank, I discovered a lot about his history with the car, his reservations about selling it and his future goals with the Carrera. I asked about the electric fan since the temperature gauge was sitting in the top end of the ‘cool’ zone and he said that it had been hard wired in the on position at some time in the past. Worrying, but apparently that had been the case for the entire tenure of his ownership, approximately 4 years.

Bank portion done, back at his flat, I get behind the wheel of the motionless M3 for the first time only to discover the door jamb showed obvious signs of collision damage not repaired properly that had not been disclosed prior to my purchase. Sinking heart, sitting 1250 miles from home in a car that cleaned out my bank account of more than double the amount of money I had ever spent on a car before, I accepted the condition, bid Mike farewell and pointed Waze for MN.

Three and a half miles in, just before merging on the interstate, turning left, I felt a sharp snap and a heard a third as the accelerator went to the floor and the car began to lose speed. Cutting from the left turn lane across a 5 lane frontage road in to a run down strip mall lot, I discovered the throttle cable had been cut and pinched in to an electronics ring terminal and through-screwed on to the accelerator pedal. Unsurprisingly, the cable had pulled loose from its crimp and I was suck with a car 1247 miles from home that would do about 12 MPH idling in 5th gear.

2014 was still well within the age of smart phones, I started calling nearby auto parts stores on this Tuesday afternoon, on the hunt for an electronics kit and crimper to repeat this kluge to get home. As thorough as my efforts may have been, every single auto parts store from Houston to Oklahoma was closed, not answering their phone, or did not have what I was looking for. Befuddled, I grabbed my backpack, the only piece of personal property I traveled with, hoping to find some tool left behind that might help me get this throttle cable back in place.

In the bottom of the laptop sleeve, I found a nickel.
Looking back underneath the now removed lower dash panel, I found that the screw that this d ring had been fitted around had a thumb screw on the back side. Holding the nickel tight in to the face of the standard flat blade screw, I was able to loosen the connection enough to give a space between the pedal linkage and the edge of the thumbscrew.

Flaring out the frayed broken cable, I was able to wedge the strands through the screw hole, at least some of them, and used the nickel as a high pressure wedge, aided by the screw to hold the cable in place while I tightened the thumb screw as hard as the frictional coefficient of human skin would allow…

Getting back in to the drivers seat vertically, this time, I fired up the M52 once again… I blipped the throttle… it responded.

A wash of cautious optimism in hand, I shut the hood, tossed my backpack in the passenger seat and got back across this frontage road headed north, driving with the pedal pressure of an egg shell, limiting myself largely to “25% throttle”.

Still dialing every auto parts store on my route for the next two hours on the bluetooth head unit, I came up completely dry and decided to just hope for the best as I drove in to darkness in the strange rural land of northern TX and southern Oklahoma.

Regathering my witts, around 1:30AM in southern Missouri at a waffle house, I finally stop to look at the car through the window over an all star.. This is actually where my infatuation with the car started. Finding, agreeing on a price, traveling to, picking up and being let down by the car was now all in the past and this red silhouette under the yellow glow of the waffle house just sat perfectly. The car could do no harm to me anymore. Hell, I was half way home and the nickel binding the throttle cable still had not skipped a beat, even though I was attempting to keep constant and low pressure on the pedal to help that stay the case, miles with a full belly started to fly by, as every mile closer to my 200-mile AAA tow limit came and went from home and I started digging in to the M52 a little more. This 29-mph 2.8 liter engine had tons of character in a 2800lb box flared homologation body and I was in love with the car.

The next morning, I stopped on my way in to town, driving non stop from TX, to visit my friend with the 1988 Zinnoberrot M3. Parked side-by-side in his two car garage, my eyes barely open from the drive and anxiety that just passed, these two cars became inseparable and to this day, we’re both still smitten by the look, feel and drive of the E30 M3.

The 8 or so years so far following, I did find that the throttle cable fix outlasted the M52 in that car. I ripped it out just 2 months in to owning the M3, and put in the S54 which now used a set of 6 insulated electrical wires and a pair of potentiometers instead of a cable, the 2.93 differential went in favor of a Z3 M roadster 3.23 unit, wheels were traded out of Nogaro Silver Sport Evo wheels, modifications reversed and miles added. This now 350-some-odd horsepower rocketship is still just as endearing all these years later and I have come to appreciate how its flaws have enabled me to love the car so much more frequently than a garage queen.