When you really like the car you're driving, it's natural to feel protective of it. And so it is with our 2002 BMW M3. I took extra care when parking it in this Culver City garage, centering it within a compact space. You can imagine my dismay when I returned from dinner to find this sloppily parked Eclipse Spyder GS beside it...
It was such a bad parking job, I couldn't get the driver door open wide enough to wedge my limbs and torso inside. So I got in from the passenger side. Although the M3 had a more challenging ingress than the last car I entered from the passenger side (a '99 VW Passat), I managed it -- and with the parking brake set.
On this occasion, I decided that I like the fact that our M3 is nearly 6 years old. It's still a wonderful car with a superb drivetrain (among other things), yet it's not so new and expensive that I'd worry incessantly about driving and parking it in LA if I owned it.
Erin Riches, Senior Editor @ 52,347
drmillerM3 says:
07:14 AM, 02/12/09
I fear for my m3 everytime I leave it unattended. Especially after I came out to find someone had scraped across the entire side of it one day. I had to repaint the whole side of the car. $1600 later it looked good as new, and I got more possessive than ever.