I can't watch

Ever since I’ve sold my Porsche 911 GT3 over a year ago, I cannot bear to consume media about the car anymore. I skip right over video reviews of the latest generation 911 GT3. It’s just too painful of a reminder of what I used to have. My god that was an amazing car. The 991 generation GT3 was one to hold forever and take to the moon. Sadly I had to move out of my parents’ house, and therefore lower my monthly expenses. It had to go.

My BMW M2 Competition is not a bad consolidation in the slightest. I’ve adored it on the very first weekend drive. But an M2 is no 911, never mind a 911 GT3. The mystique of the weird rear engine layout and the side silhouette bourn out of a Volkswagen Beetle is utterly unique in the automotive world. Every car guy aspires to own a 911 at least once in their lifetime. But they forgot to tell you how much you’ll miss yours when you sell it and move on.

It was the correct decision. The M2 is a far better fit for my current lifestyle, even if I disregard the money situation. The extra bit of ground clearance and utility compared to the super pure 911 GT3 mean I can use the M2 for the daily errands far easier. An IKEA run to get a kitchen table would have been impossible in the Porsche. Would have made for an interesting Youtube video, but I don’t do that kind of media.

The one thing I’m most proud of in owning the GT3 has to be my GT3 diaries. I can’t believe I found the motivation to write about the car every month for nearly two years. From a writing perspective, it’s an era of creativity I’ve yet to find again. Notice that I don’t have an M2 diaries. The BMW just isn’t that interesting of a car, and I drive mine so seldomly that there wouldn’t be much to write about on a monthly basis.

Hopefully there would come a time I’d be able to get over my bitterness and enjoy content about the GT3.

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IKEA run made possible.

I am humbled

It’s always fascinating to receive comments from people reading my GT3 diaries. It’s humbling to know that people looking for information about the 991.1 generation GT3 would arrive at my tiny corner of the Internet. Everything I write and do on this website is for my own enjoyment and for the sake of creating itself. Nothing was ever done in hopes of attracting an audience or turning this into a profitable enterprise. Therefore any interaction I do get from readers are super genuine, for which I am incredibly grateful.

Interestingly, the GT3 diaries attract most of its readers from the United Kingdom. If I had to guess (speculate, really), I think car enthusiasts across the pond have a different aspiration of owning the level of cars such as a GT3. Over there, guys and gals from middle-class backgrounds have no qualms about spending close to six-figures on a specialty sports car. That mirrors closely with my situation: I don’t make close to six-figures annually, yet I finagled my financial capacity to buy a GT3. Simply because I love that car, and wanted the experience.

American buyers of expensive sports cars tend to only be of the 1% earners, at least in my experience. I’ve yet to meet another enthusiast of my ilk, though perhaps that’s because no one would waste the amount of money on a car, as I did.

The GT3 diaries was my journaling of a working man’s dream of owning a super car. I am happy that it resonates with others, even if they from another continent. My only regret is I didn’t do more with the car, a year of ownership largely stolen by these COVID times. I endeavor to do better with M2 diaries, chronicling my current ownership of a BMW M2 Competition. That car is not nearly as special as a GT3, so I don’t reckon I’ll be getting a lot of correspondence on that in the comments.

I thank any and all for reading and perusing this website.

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Yup, that’s a 3080. Too bad it’s from work.

Weekend drives

Well, I hope your car is properly washed now after this noisy rainstorm (greetings, readers in San Francisco!) You did move it outside, right? Even my friend with a garage knows to move his Teslas outside when it rains, just to get it wash by nature. Alas, I’ve become that lazy as well, even though I’m a card-carrying car enthusiast. Ever since I bought the M2 Competition back in October, I’ve washed it myself a grand total of once.

I am at a stage where anything that doesn’t involve actually driving the car, I’m not all that enthused about. Spending an afternoon changing the oil? Not me! I rather pay the money and take it to the dealership. Good thing about new BMW cars is that the first three year’s maintenance is free. That’s partly why I bought the car brand new, instead of saving on depreciation in a used one. It’s not about the money: it’s about saving time.

With COVID lockdowns still in effect, I didn’t really do much outside this weekend. I went to Costco for the usual groceries, and that’s about it. I took a circuitous route to get there, though, because the M2 doesn’t get driven during the week, and I wanted to give it an appropriate amount of running time to get everything mechanically warmed up. That’s the only piece of driving I’m doing these days.

It was the weekend, so I encountered a few drivers taking their weekend sports cars out for a spin. A mint first-generation Acura NSX, a really orange Honda S600, and an early-model Porsche 911. All three were driven by seemingly older fellows, which leads me to believe those are cars they’ve kept for a very long time. It makes me wish I had the (mental) ability to keep a car for similar periods. Sadly, my record thus far is only three years.

The Porsche 911 was suppose to be my “forever car”, but “adulting” got in the way. I’m not yet sure if I want to keep the M2 for a long time. BMW’s spotty history of reliability is not conducive to that once it’s outside of the warranty period. Besides, these days I’m pining for something truly JDM: going back to my roots and getting a car produced by a Japanese manufacturer. With a manual gearbox.

Let’s see what happens after I’m done paying for the lease on my dad’s Hyundai Tucson in October…

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Someone’s missing a lid.