The 1976 BMW 2002….
Sahara Tan, Automatic, AC car with sunroof. As bland of a car as could be had from Munich.
If you are planning a new meting with your friends, consider in do some activities to make that everybody enjoy of this time like for example ball games.
No, not that one….
This one….
Plain. White (respray sometime in the 80’s). Toast.
We shall call her “Melba”
This is the saga of Steve Good, and the field find.
How it all started; growing up in a small Pennsylvania Dutch community,
values were simple: a car was used to get from point A to point B, and my father was not a “car guy” to add to the insult. My first ever experience with a 2002 was back in 1972 or 1973 – my parents had taken my sister and I over to their friend’s house for an evening. I was 9 or 10 at the time. When we parked in the driveway there was a brand new grey square car parked in their driveway, A LOT different than the LTD station wagon in which we arrived. After dinner and a few martinis our host talked my father into a quick drive around the “block”, I got to sit in the back. What a great fun ride it was, we went blasting through corners and flying down the backroads of Lancaster County! I did not fully understand, but I was hooked on this little crazy car. My father went on to buy Fiats and eventually a 320i, but I always knew I wanted a car like that one.
Many years later, during middle school, I would take my parents cars out for drives when they were away on Friday and Saturday nights, driving around the streets behind our house. I taught my self how to drive stick in dad’s Fiat 128s and 131s. One Saturday I stayed home and without being asked, I cleaned the garage. As a thank you, dad took me to a big parking lot to drive his Fiat – little did he know of my experience. He attempted to “train” me, but much to his surprise I did not need that much help. “Let the clutch out slowly”, “shift when it gets loud”, “down shift when going into a turn”, etc., I did all of them well. He tried to trick me on a hill start, but I was able to do it quickly. We went home and he had mentioned something to Mom about how well I drove. About a month later – my timing was really bad – at 4:00 pm on a Thursday, my dad’s day off, my friend and I took the Fiat out for a drive. We turned on Main street and headed east, the direction in much to my surprise, my father was coming from. Wisely, I turned into my neighbor’s driveway, cut across their yard, through our bushes and quickly turned into the garage and pretended we were listening to the radio. Well, dad thought mom had driven to the neighbor’s house when he passed us on Main street, but when he was driving past the houses, he looked to the left and saw his Fiat 128 driving between them. The jig was up. Needless to say, I was in big trouble and had some privileges revoked for quite some time.
That experience did not diminish my love of BMWs, my second car was a ‘74 2002, and then the third car was a 320i, so I came to love BMWs. Through the years I have owned over 40 BMWs, not all of them drivable, but mostly cars from the 70s and 80s: 2002s, e28s, e21s, e3s and e39s. I am not a fan of much built after 2003.
Now a new adventure begins. A friend had told me about this 2002 the owner just wanted gone; it had been sitting on his property for 10 years, and we did not know if it was stored inside or not.
My friend never did anything about it, so I finally said, “give me his name and number, I’m going to get it”. I was thinking I would get lucky and it would be a tii, but it was a ‘76 2002 that had sat outside behind the barn and was not in the best of shape. There was mold all over it, there was a big ass RAT under the hood when I opened it, and the car had begun sinking into the ground. So, against my better judgement I told him I would come fetch it the next week.
My friend had a trailer with a winch on it, so I borrowed him, and we got it to our shop. Looking more and more at this car, I found there was no rust in the important places! No shock tower rust, no foot pedal rust, just some of the typical fender rust up front. This is very unusual for a Missouri car. At the very least I could part it out or sell the rolling shell and use the proceeds for the tii I was restoring.
Enter stage left, Russ Circle, the curator of Generation Adventure. “Hey Steve, you need an adventure”. “Whatever Russ, I still have a daughter in college, I’m working all the time, you must be crazy”. Russ is particularly good at planting a seed and tilling it correctly. One day he stopped by my shop and said, “what are you doing with that white 2002”. I told him that someone gave it to me and that I would probably sell it and use the proceeds for my tii. Russ replied, “you should think about an adventure in it, we could set it up like a safari car and go places”.
I thought to myself, “this guy is nuts”! A few dirty martinis, old fashions, and multiple phone calls later, here I am, building a damn safari car to drive to an orphanage in Mexico as a benefit for Pancreatic Cancer and the American Legion Auxiliary. My brother-in-law passed away of pancreatic cancer and it was a serious blow to our family. We were at each other’s throats all the time, but we would have done anything for each other. So, raising money to help fight this dreaded disease is now my mission as well as raising money for the American Legion Auxiliary and the veterans who fought to give us this great free nation which we take for granted every single day!