The Vintage 2015 Winston-Salem NC, May 22-24

From Festmeister Scott Sturdy,

Things are already being put together for 2015! We will be at Old Salem again and I have also secured rooms at Hawthorne Inn . I don't have a code for booking rooms online, but you can call and mention "BMW car show" for our rates for May 22-24.

Hawthorne Inn 336-777-3000

We're staying at one of the b&b's in Old Salem.

Don

Registration is Open

Register here: http://www.motorsportreg.com/events/vintage-2015-old-salem-another-great-event-367860#.VLF3BcaFZSW

Nearly an E9 sweep!

Peoples Choice Awards

5 CS Coupes - lots of triple side-draft Webers!!

Gary Beck - nachtblau with black interior (any have a tan interior for Gary?)
Wayne Killen - Atlantik blau with white interior
Bowman Grey - Malaga with tan
Wayne 2000CS Verona red with black
George Whitely, most votes "by a wide margin" parked behing m car.

Waynes car
...and the Great White...

approximately 16 coupes in attendance
A beautiful day

What a nice day. Time to go E9 shopping!

I want to go to this but it has been falling at an inconvenient time of year, graduations etc. Maybe next year but I will have another the week before.

Stan said:

Peoples Choice Awards

5 CS Coupes

Gary Beck
Wayne Killen
Bowman Grey
Wayne 2000CS
George (?) very nice 2800

approximately 16 coupes in attendance
A beautiful day

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Indeed a nice day...and new E9 owner friends

Well, just back from my second vintage and well worth the 350 mile trip from Virginia, especially with working AC on the way down (on the way back, I'll get to that shortly). Our coupes did great as Stan summarized. I counted about 16 there with about ten in a straight-line as seen in the photo here. Aside from showing our beauties, what was most fun was spending quality time with my E9 colleagues, most of which are on this board, along with some new friends - Andrew and Cindy Wilson, Chris and Cathy ? and Amy with her triple carb Silver beauty -- and my old favorites Doug Dolan, Gary Beck, Stan Chamallas and Tom Samuelson. I brought my wife and youngest daughter, Fran and Hadley, back this year and my son who just graduated from college.

So the car was running so perfect and nearly everthing was working at the start of the event, so I pinched myself that it could not be true and it was not to be. The turn signal gremlin returned (this time on the left indicator lights only failing to trigger the dash light after two blinks) and then the AC died famously half way home...and it could have been a special effects scene from a John Carpenter movie: it started with the compressor seemingly sapping half my horsepower and killing the engine at stoplights, then a rubber like smell and wild scretching sound that began to drown out the engine and exhaust...so time to turn it off and enjoy driving the way I've done it the last seven years without AC (windows down!).

But I was relatively spared as Stan encountered serious fuel pump blues on the way down!

Anyway, a great time and fabulous company but serious competition from another CS owned by George ?? running nearly my colors!

Wayne, sounds like the compressor ate itself.

Thank you to Rob Siegel & Tome Samuelson for escorting me back from NC "just in case".
It was a glorious ride with a slow start at %:00am. We kept to the speed limit through the area in NC and VA where we were stopped last year but after that we were shown the Waze! We motored briskly (too slow for Tom) at between 75 -80 most of the way. I got to my house in NH at 7:30pm. Fourteen hours is fast considering breakfast, lunch and fuel stops!

The Car Gods Tickle My Wife

As many of you know, bringing the spouse into the inner automotive sanctum is a risky undertaking. In deciding to take my wife to the Vintage, I was hoping she would connect with at least some of the people there, and that she would otherwise be patient with me as I delved deeply into the details of such fascinating topics as cleaning rust from the inside of my gas tank and bumper blank replacements. I also held out a faint hope that her appreciation for Annabelle might increase slightly as she had a chance to observe fully assembled and working e9s.

What unfolded was nothing short of astonishing.

The e9 folks were even better than their internet personas, and I enjoyed mightily mingling with (and introducing my wife to) others smitten with their BMWs. Cathy managed to connect with several of them.

Next, I could literally see my stock rising in her eyes as each successive e9 was awarded some prize and one of the small band seated around us needed to run up front and retrieve a trophy. She was amazed that the e9s cleaned up at the awards.

Now at this point, my inaugural Vintage was a smashing success. And then, the other shoe dropped.

As we observed a nice couple from Clifton Forge, VA arriving at their beautifully preserved 2002, Cathy began expressing an interest in their car. She then commented that it reminded her of our 1978 Audi Fox, a car she loved dearly that we had to sell due to structural rust. Thereafter, she wanted to pause and evaluate several of the 2002s we encountered. And then, the winds became calm, a choir of angels begin to sing, the skies parted and illuminated my wife with a sliver of light as she said to me:

"Why don't you buy me one of those."

that was great Chris! Was great to meet you and Cathy!
look forward to dinner when you are in Maine!

E9's not withstanding, this show has been lacking for the past couple of years, first Spaten is no longer involved (which was one of the highlights of the show), second either the same cars or a ton of beater E30's. If I want to see cars like that I can peruse Craigslist.

chicane said:

E9's not withstanding, this show has been lacking for the past couple of years, first Spaten is no longer involved (which was one of the highlights of the show), second either the same cars or a ton of beater E30's. If I want to see cars like that I can peruse Craigslist.

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Lots of E9's
Lots of nice '02's
No Spaten, but I think they have pulled out of a lot of car shows
Some very nice E30s, Baurs, a couple 850s, M3's, M5s, and a few beautiful E24's
Were you at the same show I was at?

Stan said:

Lots of E9's
Lots of nice '02's
No Spaten, but I think they have pulled out of a lot of car shows
Some very nice E30s, Baurs, a couple 850s, M3's, M5s, and a few beautiful E24's
Were you at the same show I was at?

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The E9's were great. The best part of the show IMHO. The E9's are always great. But the kind of guys who own E9's are usually well heeled and would only bring a decent one to the show. I didn't say that there weren't any good cars I have just noticed in the past two years compared to previous years the quality of the cars in general is getting lower. It seems to be an excuse for young guys in their well worn E30's or E28's to show up. Spaten was a real gem. Where else are you going to go to a show where they pass out free Bavarian beer. That, honestly cannot be replaced.

Well heeled!!! Au contraire. The coupe owners I know personally and the 150 or so I have sold two runs of CS Register \ Registry badges to seemed to be less than "well heeled."

Read the recent post from the young enthuasiast who pulled a coupe from soil it was bound to.

I was not there, so I can't respond to other parts of your post. And what's the problem with " young guys in well worn" BMWs showing up. Perhaps they have aspirations to some day arrive in an e9 or 2002. "Well heeled or not."

oneills said:

Well heeled!!! Au contraire. The coupe owners I know personally and the 150 or so I have sold two runs of CS Register \ Registry badges to seemed to be less than "well heeled."

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A restored or original coupe is going to run you between $35 - $65K no "young enthusiast" is going to be able to afford a SECOND car like that. The owners that I know are 6 figure and up income earners...yes, well heeled.

oneills said:

I was not there

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Then you cannot respond intelligently to the salient parts of my post.

Good to have you back on the site, Chicane. Always a pleasure :lol:

chicane said:

The E9's were great. The best part of the show IMHO. The E9's are always great. But the kind of guys who own E9's are usually well heeled and would only bring a decent one to the show. I didn't say that there weren't any good cars I have just noticed in the past two years compared to previous years the quality of the cars in general is getting lower. It seems to be an excuse for young guys in their well worn E30's or E28's to show up. Spaten was a real gem. Where else are you going to go to a show where they pass out free Bavarian beer. That, honestly cannot be replaced.

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I agree that free cold German beer served by smiling pretty young women would have improved the experience.

Then again, pretty much everything in life could be improved by the addition of free cold German beer served by smiling pretty young women.

Free Beer

There actually was free beer in the Hawthorne Inn parking lot.
Not Spaten but some pretty good craft beer

Chicane, I did not have to be there to respond to your assertion that coupe owners are well heeled and make over or well over six figures. And read my post again. I specifically referred to "aspirations" of young guys to some day own an e9.

Thirty years ago our coupes were under-appreciated, under-valued and under priced. Otherwise I would not have been able to afford a coupe on a community college teacher's salary, own a house and support two children.

Look at the prices in the CS Register and the Roundel. As a proportion of income they were quite affordable. How many years have people on this board complained about how our coupes are priced so low relative to Porsches and the like.

You are right that here in 2015 and even going back 10 years prices of coupes have increased by quite a lot. But wages have stagnated. Inflation has wiped out any REAL increase in wages for the last 45 years. Hence, my colleagues are priced out of the e9 market while I was not 30 years ago. One of my colleagues who is single and been teaching for 15 years would have to really stretch to own a well sorted 2002.

Now I will have my insurance company increase my agreed value once again so that if anything happens to my beloved I can replace her with something comparable. I hope.

chicane said:

It seems to be an excuse for young guys in their well worn E30's or E28's to show up.

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Well, for the record, I brought my 420k mile E28 535iS because I could, although the "patina" is not to everyone's taste. I didn't want to put the miles on my E28 M5 and the Bav is engaged in a glacially-paced engine swap. However, after that many miles I feel she earned the right to be there, battle scars and everything, and found more than a few admirers of that fact. As far as being a young guy, I wish...