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Second ED off and running... after a brief interruption

24K views 112 replies 34 participants last post by  jnmit12 
#1 · (Edited)
Met with Wine-O and spouse at a Biergarten last night and took delivery of this nice Le Mans Blue E93 M3 this morning. Almost a disaster but narrowly averted. More to follow. Keri-Lynne Shaw made a special trip to meet us and Bernard Hausmaninger was very helpful. Stay tuned for more.

Photo key:

Karen and I, Mike (Wine-O) and Maureen at the biggest biergarten you've ever seen.

Former BMW ED Manager for North America Keri-Lynne Shaw joins us pre-delivery for a real full-circle moment.

Bernard Hausmaninger is a legend among Welt Delivery Specialists.

The top is down, but what's that red light blinking for?
 

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#69 · (Edited)
Regarding driving around the lake (or just about anyplace in Italy for that matter), experience really helps. First time I did it, I encountered a tour bus coming the other way in a couple of the most inopportune spots, and was pretty sure the next sound I was going to be hearing was crumpling sheet metal. Worked out fine, though, probably due in large part to the experience of the other drivers. Scarcely gave it a second thought by this trip - #4.

The issue with the rectractable top on this trip was actually kind of funny at the end. But at first when the top would go into the trunk but the decklid wouldn't close, and Bernard was clearly stumped too, Karen's eyes got real big as she stammered, "...b-b-but how long is this "repair" going to take?", clearly recalling the 2 1/2 days we lost in '08, and knowing that we were once again headed for her favorite place on the whole trip: Lake Como. Bernard of course couldn't answer, but we were all relieved when the problem turned out to be the mis-placed front license plate holder, sitting in the "no-go" zone in the trunk.
 
#71 · (Edited)
Great Report

Boothguy,

Nice job on the report. I've been pretty absent from BFest the last couple of months because i'm just buried in work and simply haven't had time, but...

Three years ago I did ED for my 2008 550i. You, Skywalkerbeth, and many other very familiar names in this thread were also doing ED that year, so I feel a little fraternal bond with you all, even though I haven't spent much time corresponding with each of you.

My wife and I are heading back to Munich in two weeks, and we pick up her 535xi on Friday, July 15th. Spending two sure-to-be-fun weeks between Munich, Amsterdam, and the Rhine river, with lots of fun and interesting stops in between.

For anyone wondering how well an '08 E60 is holding up after 3 years and out of warranty - I've put 52,000 miles on this baby and she hasn't had any issues whatsoever. I can't even believe that such a complex piece of machinery and circuitry could be so much fun and so trouble free. It's holding up so well and has been so much fun to have that I went ahead and bought it off of lease, and got a SCREAMING deal from by BFest CA (Jim Mannheimer, Salem, OR) on what was essentially a 2:1 transaction. My wife is now a BMW convert, too, and HAD to have her own, and HAD to get it in Munich.

Huzzah!

BickUW89
 
#72 · (Edited)
Nice of you to mention that "fraternal bond" thing, which at least for me, is a very real part of this forum and therefore of my BMW ownership thus far. The Spousal Unit doesn't really get it, but I know a lot of people here do.

So if I'm understanding correctly, you're keeping your '08 550 and the new car is for your wife, who enjoyed the last experience so much, she's doing it again for her car? I'd compliment you on the nice sales job if I didn't already know how addictive the whole ED experience really is.

Looking forward to hearing and seeing more beginning in two weeks! Be advised that you're expected to top your great trip report from three years ago.
 
#76 ·
So if I'm understanding correctly, you're keeping your '08 550 and the new car is for your wife, who enjoyed the last experience so much, she's doing it again for her car?
Yep, that's what happened. I had to do a pretty hard sales job on her before I convinced her to get the E60, but my E39 was 8 years old and had 120,000 miles by then. "Honey, I NEED a new car."

She was totally not into The Welt experience, at the time. Wouldn't pose in the picture, and just kind of stood off to the side the whole time while I was acting like a kid in a candy store. Never even drove the new car while we were in Europe, if you can believe it. :dunno:

Fast forward a couple of months, and one day she drove my car to work instead of her minivan. She came home that evening with a cheshire cat grin and exclaimed "OMG, I LOVE your car." Sold. :thumbup:

Now, the kids are almost all grown up and out of the house (down to our last one, who graduates next year), and we no longer need a minivan. It's 8 years old and has a 100,000 miles on it. "I don't want to drive a dumb old minivan around anymore."

Me: "Honey, do you want to go back to Germany and get you a car?"

Her: "Yes Yes YES! Let's do it!!"

The rest is history in the making. :bigpimp:
 
#73 ·
Here's to hoping the ED experience rubs off on my wife. To her cars are an A to B proposition and should be as efficient, safe, and reliable as possible. Anything else is irrelevant to her. She is ambivalent about BMWs, though she is lovingly benevolent when it comes to indulging my BMW fetish. Thank god she loves to travel as the ED is what finally sold her on it.
 
#74 ·
I'll lay odds that unless something really untoward happens on your trip, your wife will be just as hooked as mine was after our first ED trip seven years ago. Nature of the beast. And I'm speaking of ED here... not the wife.

Even with the problems encountered on our '08 trip, she was agitating for the just-completed trip to happen.
 
#80 ·
My wife did the victory lap and then drove her car off the floor at the Welt. Then after we had the car brought around she drove to Dingolfing. I drove back. The next day she drove the entire way to Salzburg in the rain. We traded off driving the rest of the trip. She did 145 on the Autobahn. When we got a flat tire on a Saturday afternoon, the day before Nurburgring, she told me later that she almost cried realizing the she wouldn't be able to drive the Nurburgring. She's looking forward to taking the BMW CCA Car Control Clinic at the end of July and the BMW CCA Driving School at Willow Springs in December. She loves driving her car and she thoroughly enjoyed driving it in Germany!
 
#81 · (Edited)
Hello David:

Like Bick, I have become a part-time lurker here. All work and no play . . . you know how it sometimes goes. Nevertheless, I enjoyed your recent trip report as much as your '08 version. You may recall that our paths crossed briefly back in '08 in the parking lot of the Villa Del Balbianello. We had just started our own ED vacation in a new 535i, and you were in the middle of your ordeal. The encounter was brief, but I honestly feel like I know you from the vivid accounts of both ED trips. I am of Italian descent, and particularly appreciate and enjoy the way you bring the food, the wine, and the beauty of the country to life! I know this, you really know how to travel! I'd just love to follow you around on your next trip . . . don't need to know the itinerary to be assured that we'd have a great experience. I'm on a 3-year lease cycle, so my '08 was going back at the end of May. ED was out of the question due to a college graduation (my son), a family wedding (my niece), and the inability to take enough time away from work. So, I did "conventional delivery" of a new 535i. It just wasn't the same. God willing, I'm already looking forward to 2014 for the opportunity of another ED. You've given me inspiration!

All the best,

Phil T.
 
#83 ·
Hello David:

I enjoyed your recent trip report as much as your '08 version. You may recall that our paths crossed briefly back in '08 in the parking lot of the Villa Del Balbianello. We had just started our own ED vacation in a new 535i, and you were in the middle of your ordeal. The encounter was brief, but I honestly feel like I know you from the vivid accounts of both ED trips. I am of Italian descent, and particularly appreciate and enjoy the way you bring the food, the wine, and the beauty of the country to life! I know this, you really know how to travel! I'd just love to follow you around on your next trip . . . don't need to know the itinerary to be assured that we'd have a great experience. I'm on a 3-year lease cycle, so my '08 was going back at the end of May. ED was out of the question due to a college graduation (my son), a family wedding (my niece), and the inability to take enough time away from work. So, I did "conventional delivery" of a new 535i. It just wasn't the same. God willing, I'm already looking forward to 2014 for the opportunity of another ED. You've given me inspiration!

All the best,

Phil T.
Could (sniff) someone hand me a tissue? I seem to have gotten something (choke) in my eye...

Ahem.

Hi again, Phil: I do vividly remember our brief meeting at Villa del Balbianello in '08: your epically dirty 535 and your whole family's incredulous reaction to the brief recap of our tussle to that point with The Transmission Gremlin.

Thanks for your generous comments - I do appreciate them. As I've mentioned before, my goal was to take you all along on this trip, even though it was much less of an adventure than my last one. Thankfully.

The other thing I hope I illustrated was the value of slow travel. That is, spending more time soaking up the flavor of a particular location, rather than looking at a building for five seconds and then hurrying off to the next Starwood destination on the itinerary. We would have missed most if not all of the really memorable experiences of our last several trips - ED and otherwise, if we had done them Griswold family-style, and had we not stayed in small, non-chain hotels.

I rarely comment on someone's proposed itinerary or hotel choices here on the ED forum, even though they're asking, because not everyone has the same priorities. But right now, there's someone soliciting opinions on an itin that has them staying in a different hotel every night of a one-week stay, and commenting that his travel companion has been to this part of the world a couple of years back, but really doesn't remember any of it. Gee - I wonder why? For me, that scarcely counts as travel.

My advice: see less and experience more. Take the long way from A-to-B. Strike up a conversation with the folks at the next table. Let a local sit in your car. Buy a snack from the lady in the little pizzeria that's smaller than your walk-in closet at home. Walk through an open-air market, even if you don't need anything. Buy some groceries - even just some bread or cheese or salumi: you'll be rubbing elbows with the locals. Slow down.

Not everyone's interested in a three-hour tasting of 35 different Barolos - I get that. But leave some room in your travel plans for the possibility of something unplanned like that happening. Otherwise, it never will. And you will have seen the sights, but missed the experience.
 

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#82 ·
As much fun as I had behind the wheel on this and the previous trips, I confess I'd have liked to have been a passenger for at least some of it; just to be able to look out the window and take it all in for more than a second at a time. Unfortunately, The Spousal Unit is also a nervous passenger, and if not for her new camera and 32GB memory card, she wouldn't have been looking at the scenery either.
 
#85 ·
Good call. I had intended to do a cooking class on this trip as well, but couldn't quite fit it in. You're going to let us know how it goes, right?
 
#88 ·
Yes, I'll let you all know...assuming I remember anything.:thumbup:
 
#86 ·
Since pictures of the car seem to get the most views, I thought just for grins I'd put up a selection for you all.

The key:

Although it's a little like peeking at your Christmas presents, it was nice to get a pre-delivery look at my car.

One time you don't need to say "cheese" to get a grin for the camera. Wine-O's 535 is over there in the distance.

Everybody wanted to check out the M3 every time it was stationary.

A very rare occurrence: lots of space in an Italian parking garage.

Finally some sunshine in Piemonte.

Topless in Tuscany.

From this far away, it doesn't look all that dirty.

Everybody who wanted to sit in the car got a turn.

Stone buildings in Chianti country make a nice contrast with the Le Mans Blue.

Mona Lisa was here - and my E93 too.
 

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#91 ·
Just once I want to see a photo of a group of women standing around an open hood, hands on their chins, peering in...
 
#93 ·
I love my wife, but do confess to a certain amount of envy for you guys whose spouses know what a torque wrench is AND can use it, cry when they miss-out driving on the Nordschliefe and go "whoo-hoo" when zooming around the 49 hairpin bends on the Stelvio. If those kinds of women are ever found in a group it would sure satisfy Beth's scenario above.

Anyone here have what they consider to be the ideal ED/enthusiast spouse? Or if not, how about a better description of one?
 
#95 ·
Holy thread bump! Thanks for the nice comments.

I couldn't tell from your other thread about just having received the pre-trip package from BMW whether this will be your first ED or not. Either way, you're going to tell us how it goes, right? Remember the 12-Hour Rule, which has sort of fallen by the wayside recently, still has teeth and has been known to bite if you don't observe it... And that means ALL you EDers out there.
 
#96 ·
Holy thread bump! Thanks for the nice comments.

I couldn't tell from your other thread about just having received the pre-trip package from BMW whether this will be your first ED or not. Either way, you're going to tell us how it goes, right? Remember the 12-Hour Rule, which has sort of fallen by the wayside recently, still has teeth and has been known to bite if you don't observe it... And that means ALL you EDers out there.
Yes, This is my 3rd ED:bigpimp:

and everytime is just as exciting as the first.....cant wait to go back to the PCD as well to take re-delivery ( this would be my 10th time at the PCD or 11th...but whose counting...lol)
 
#97 ·
I took it here, http://www.eastsidebavarian.com/ , the total cost was a little over $300 dollars. It was about $99 dollars an hour. The labor consumed most of the total price up. Before you take it in to get it fixed you should buy a bottle of techron and right when your gas tank is almost out pour the whole bottle into the tank, then fill your car up with non ethanol gas that does not have any additives or any junk in it. Take the car on the freeway and run it at a high level of RPM's at high speeds for no more than 30 minutes to help reduce the carbon build up which is helping cause your problem. That was what BMW of Bellevue told me to do and it worked a little and my car would stop "shaking" as much but because I had waited for over 4k miles to get it fixed I had got myself stuck.
 
#100 · (Edited)
That's a shame. I couldn't stand someone else driving my new car first! I've never driven in snow (except once I rented a car in Tahoe during the winter) but I'm gonna do it next week! The car has winter tires, and as I understand it, the freeways get cleared immediately. You need to get her pumped up!!! You know, tell her something like, "Now that all my careful planning is paying off, honey, the fun begins! New car, here we come!". And if your wife would respond to such a comment, try "You're gonna look awesome behind the wheel of that 128i!". :rofl:

Mikla
 
#105 · (Edited)
Just revisited your report David... As great as I remember it and it was fun to revisit some of our favorite spots through your great pictures :thumbup:
 
#106 ·
Holy Thread Revival! Hi Stuart - just saw a couple of days ago that you're going again in July. We're planning a late-May to mid-June trip. Which means I've got to decide between a Z4 and a 4 Series. And soon. Wish we were overlapping a bit, but maybe we'll leave something for you at the Miralago in Cernobbio.
 
#107 ·
Hey David... Sorry our trips are not coinciding... Would have loved to meet up with you and Karen. Decided to stay in Brunate this time rather than in Cernobbio and have found a B&B that seems super inviting. I'll be posting my itinerary soon after I get confirmation from BMW on my pick-up date.

Z4 or 4 Series? Is the 4 going to be a convertible?
 
#108 ·
I'm potentially willing to give up on a drop-top this time around because the car in the pic below will be far enough along in the restoration process to be driveable in a year or so. It's a cabriolet, meaning it has a soft top as well as a removable hard top. A bottle of Barolo to anyone here who isn't already in the know (I'm looking at you, Skywalkerbeth), who can correctly identify the make and model.
 

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#110 ·
1962?
 
#111 ·
My hat is off in admiration of Jimmit's first-pitch grand slam home run. Kindly state the make in order to formalize your winning entry, and PM me with where you'd like your bottle of wine sent. Most impressive.

Nice effort on the year, Stuart. They built 202 of them between 1959 and 1962. Mine was the 70th, built in the spring of 1960.
 
#113 ·
Very jealous of your car! Now that you have quoted the year, I can see it is a series II (Ferrari 250 GT Cabriolet Pininfarina)

I'll trade my winnings for regular updates on how your restoration is going... Hope to see many more behind the scenes photos that are so rare to find. Have you selected a color? There are so many cool colors found of Ferraris of this era. Thinking of ordering from the historical color pallet next time around myself.

best,

John
 
#112 ·
Can't wait to see her when she's finished ;) Can you imagine driving around Tuscany in that, listening to Domenico Modugno singing Volare on the radio? Perfect!
 
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