2005 BMW M3 Convertible - Bankrupt

I don't know how long this BMW M3 convertible has been sitting on the third floor of the parking garage next to the gym I go to in a mixed-use, retail-residential, open-air mall about twenty minutes west of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. I believe it's a 2004 to 2006 "Bimmer," so let's split the difference and call it a 2005.

These things aren't my cup of antifreeze, but since it's still sitting up here after months and months, maybe even more than a year, I figured it was about time I took a closer look. Beats staring at the gaggle of Hyundai Palisades and Kia Tellurides that clog the oh-so-narrow parking spaces in this garage.

 

Probably hard to tell but his tire is flat. Car is filthy although it has papers sitting inside and the plates are still on it so how "abandoned" is this thing? I wonder if the owner told the mall they're leaving this here "for now". 

Sigh. And I feel it's wrong to park one of my cars up here when we get a heavy snowstorm so it's easier for me to clear my driveway. Who's the shmuck? Rule following me or the douche nozzle who owns this thing? 

Ah, the sense of entitlement that BMW drivers have. Or the sense of entitlement us plebians who don't own one believe they have. I get as many sneers from people when they see me driving my 1991 Corvette as I get thumbs ups, so, yeah, I get it. 

Although BMW was already in the SUV business by the mid-2000s, with the original X5 arriving for the 2000 model year and the X3 following in 2004, the company was still better known for its lineup of sporty coupes, sedans, and convertibles.

At the time, the German automaker's core lineup revolved around the 3-, 5-, 6-, and 7-series cars. The 6-series was available as a coupe and convertible, while the 5- and 7-series were offered only as four-door sedans. 

The 3-series, BMW's volume leader, came in just about every geschmack (flavor) imaginable, including a coupe, sedan, convertible, wagon, and hatchback, depending on the market.

The "M" in "M3" refers to BMW's performance division, BMW M, formerly known as BMW Motorsport. The group reworks engines, suspensions, transmissions, brakes, interiors, and exterior styling, transforming already capable vehicles into machines many enthusiasts consider the best versions BMW has ever built.

BMW M was established in 1972 as BMW Motorsport GmbH to oversee the company's racing efforts. Before long, the division expanded beyond the racetrack and into road cars, creating a brand identity that took hold with enthusiasts during the 1980s and remains one of the most recognizable performance badges in the automotive world.

Then, as now, BMW charged a serious premium for the coveted M badge. This car new in 2005 could easily have stickered for more than $60,000, while a standard 2005 BMW 3 Series convertible started at roughly $42,000.

If you loathe BMW drivers, no doubt you double up on the Haterade for those that drive M's. However, if someone just wants to drive a BMW, most would opt for lesser expensive models. The original owner of this thing was, hopefully, really into the car although serious performance buffs scoff at convertibles (says the pretty girl who drives a Corvette convertible). 

So what we have here is what's left of a rich person's toy, or perhaps the former pride and joy of someone who stretched their budget because they simply loved the car. Let's hope it's the latter, although neither scenario sits especially well with me.

That's why I take issue with how something so expensive and desirable in its day could end up so downtrodden now. Then again, we're all familiar with stories of lottery winners and multimillionaire athletes who somehow wind up broke. 

1967 Buick LeSabre - Choice is Good for the Consumer; It's Not Good for Business

Some old Buicks, like this 1967 LeSabre, beg the question, "what is, or was, a Buick?" On one hand, Buick was (still is) a prestige brand, one rung below Cadillac on General Motors' famous pricing ladder. On the other hand, they sold entry-level, no-frills strippers like this one.

This car, which found me on Facebook Marketplace less than fifteen minutes south of The Triple Wide, is delightfully bereft of luxury amenities you'd think any Buick would have. No power windows, power door locks, or air conditioning here. It even has a cloth interior.

For the roughly $400 premium the original owner paid over a Chevrolet Impala, they didn't get power steering or power brakes without paying extra. They did, however, get a Buick V-8 and an automatic transmission.

With the Chevrolet, a six-cylinder engine was standard, along with a row-your-own three-on-the-tree manual transmission.

Ostensibly, while the LeSabre rode on a four-inch-longer wheelbase and was about four inches longer overall, the Impala and LeSabre were essentially the same car beneath the styling and trim differences. What's more, equipping the Impala with a V-8 and an automatic transmission still cost less than stepping up to the Buick.

Pay more for essentially the same thing because it wears what some perceive as a more prestigious badge? In a vacuum, it makes little sense, but it does, I guess, in a keep-up-with-the-Joneses world.

Also helps if you prefer the styling of the LeSabre enough to cough up the extra cabbage for the Buick. I know me, I'd have a hard time paying extra for the Buick no matter how much I liked it. 

Buick built entry-level, rental-grade cars like this LeSabre to cash in on the brand's perceived cachet while broadening its appeal. It was all fun and games until you realize it wandered directly into Chevrolet's low-cost lane.

The blurring of GM's brands was already well underway in the 1960s, and everything was fine until it wasn't. As foreign imports gained traction during the 1970s and into the 1980s, GM's myriad brands, many of which were remarkably similar, suddenly became a huge and costly liability. 

Choice is good for the customer, it's not good for business. 

As for this particular car, I don't know whether it's the time of year or a sign that the market is truly cooling, but like that 1961 Chevrolet Biscayne I recently wrote about, this very clean, supposedly ultra-low-mileage 1967 Buick LeSabre appears to be available for surprisingly little money. The asking price is $10,800.

That's not a lot of money for a lot of car, especially one claimed to have just 28,000 miles on it. It seems like quite the deal, particularly if you can get it out the door for something closer to $9,000. Bonus, looks like it's a Florida car. 

I swear this car would have carried an asking price approaching $20,000 in the years immediately following the pandemic. I'm not saying it would have sold for that amount, though.

Naturally, it's only a bargain if you're into these types of cars. Compared to today's vehicles, these things ride and handle like riding lawn mowers. Sure, a few Gen Zers and younger millennials may appreciate the styling as much as old-car nerds like me do, but thirty seconds behind the wheel and they'd running back to their Hyundai Palisade and head home.  

My only quibble with this car is the after-market rims; sorry, they don't work on this car. Neither do the raised white letter tires. I'm all about a chunky tire and how it fills the space and improves ride and handling somewhat, but "sporty" tires on a supposed luxury car to me is like wearing sneakers with a tuxedo. 

Buick introduced the LeSabre nameplate for 1959 as its new entry-level full-size model. The LeSabre remained in production through the 2005 model year before being replaced by the Lucerne.

 

1964 Chevrolet Impala - Born Again

We're getting to that time of year when the tasty visual treats that pop up at the transmission shop next to my office in Youngstown, Ohio, are becoming fewer and fewer. This 1964 Chevrolet Impala was over there recently, and despite it being from the year I was born, it's never been a particular favorite of mine. Still, with the inventory at my disposal dwindling these days, I felt somewhat obliged to stop over and take a look.

This shade of purple, these rims, these tires and some of the gold trim on the car aren't my cup of antifreeze.  I'd say the paint is at least thirty-years old. 

I have no idea what's under the hood, although we can see here, she's an automatic. If it's the factory unit, it would be Chevrolet's famous two-speed Powerglide transmission, which was offered from 1950 through 1973.

My best guess is it has either the entry-level 230-cubic-inch inline six or a 283-cubic-inch V-8. You won't be going anywhere too quickly, although you'll get there smoothly. Or as smoothly as possible in 1964.

All 1961 through 1964 full-size Chevrolets were built on GM's infamous X-frame chassis, which allowed the body to sit lower within the frame. It did wonders for styling, but side-impact protection was minimal.

Best to look both ways at railroad crossings and busy four-way intersections.

Like a freshly minted, Bible-thumping, scripture-quoting born-again convert, or perhaps more accurately, an ardent ex-smoker, the 1963 and 1964 full-size Chevrolets stood in stark contrast to the styling excesses of the 1959 and 1960 models.

I thought Chevrolet really got it right in 1961 and 1962, but in an age of planned obsolescence, designs changed dramatically from year to year. There's only one place to go when you've pushed the limits as far as they'll go. You go restrained 

Frankly, if I'd been of the age and means back then, I'd have held onto my '61 or '62 Impala after seeing what the '63 and '64 models looked like. Come 1965, though, it was a different story. I think Chevrolet hit its stride once again in 1965, a stride it carried through 1970.

Contemporary road tests generally praised the smooth ride of the 1964 Impala, although many noted that the brakes left something to be desired and that the body leaned heavily in corners. The suspension could bob and float over rough roads, while the steering was often described as vague.

Rather than scoff at how floaty and crude these cars seem, as some snot-nosed, know-it-all Gen Z car vloggers and bloggers tend to do, we have to understand the era they came from.

The typical buyer of a car like this grew up with spindly Ford Model Ts and Model As, vehicles that often rode more like horse-drawn conveyances than modern automobiles. Even many cars of the 1930s and early 1940s rode more like trucks than the cloud-like dream machines these cars seemed to be, relatively speaking.

In the mid-1960s, the auto industry was still years away from producing automobiles that rode as though they were gliding on glass while also handling with precision. Back then, you generally got one or the other.

I sent some of these pictures to my 29-year-old, semi-car-crazy older son and asked him what year he thought the car was.

Bless his heart, he could have easily used AI to identify it, but he didn't.

He replied, "Gotta be something from the '50s."

Thanks for making me feel older than I am, my boy.

2026 Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing - Local Celebrity

I was taking a lovely, top-down, leaf-and-sunshine-swept autumn drive through the tonier part of town in my 1991 Corvette convertible last weekend when I pulled up behind a little black Cadillac.

I got up real close so I could clearly make out that it was a CT4-V BLACKWING. Wowza. I'm using this brand new 2026 Blackwing 

You don't see many Cadillac CT4s, let alone CT4-Vs, and especially a Blackwing. Gosh, I felt like I was sharing the road with a local celebrity.

Cadillac introduced the CT4 in May 2019 as a 2020 model, replacing the ATS. Built on GM's Alpha architecture, which it shares with the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro, the CT4 is a nice-riding and handling, if fairly ordinary, sedan. The CT4-V is a pleasant enough sports sedan, too. The CT4-V Blackwing, introduced for 2022, is a different bird altogether.

While critics have been fairly ambivalent toward the CT4 and even the CT4-V, they adore the Blackwing. Car and Driver suggesting it's more engaging to drive than the car it's purportedly slotted up against, the BMW M3 Competition.

Although the M3 Competition is quicker, the Blackwing is hardly slow. Its 3.6-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 makes 472 horsepower and 445 lb-ft of torque. The porky, stubby little car can get from zero to sixty in about four seconds.

The CT4-V Blackwing is also roughly twenty-grand less expensive than a comparable BMW M3 Competition. Such a deal, no?

I'm the wrong person to ask. I would never spend this kind of money on a car. For the record, I spent relatively little on my Corvette. 

So, who would buy a Blackwing? 

Good question. Best I can tell that hard-core car freaks who value searing high performance more than anything else. There's something ostensibly very cool about that. And who's not into saving or not spending a little money? 

I certainly don't think it's because they think the car is beautiful; as far as look goes, both the Blackwing and the BMW aren't anything to write home or text mom about. 

Sorry, but when you spend that much on a car, not that I would but if I did, it better be as viscerally appealing as it is tempting to drive to its limits and beyond.

 

1968 Ford XL - Such is Life

We lost our local engineer in the latest round of company downsizing recently. Tom (name changed to protect the guilty) was quite the character; "character" an overused term to describe someone who's charmingly quirky. Tom is nothing if not quirky. Let's leave it at that rather than character-assassinate the poor guy, who can't defend himself here. Let's instead talk about the 1968 Ford XL he had "stored" out in the back of our 10-acre compound in Youngstown, Ohio.

Obviously, there's a lot to unpack here.

This showed up less than a month after he was told by corporate to remove all his other junky cars, trucks, engines, transmissions, lawn mowers, garden tractors, toys, and who knows what else from the property. On one hand, I respected what I perceived to be his gumption in doing so, a metaphorical middle finger to "the man." Well, it was either that or he didn't quite grasp the "you-need-to-do-this-now-ness" of the directive. An edict from the very people who ultimately decided whether he had a job or not. Would he still be employed if he had hauled his stuff out of here? Probably not, but still.

I never asked Tom what his plans were for this thing. It's in, no kidding, terrible shape, and having it sit out here in all this soggy glory on the Ohio-Pennsylvania line isn't doing it any favors. The hood is so rusty that when I went to lift it, I felt it had all the structural integrity of a matchbook cover.

My father had a 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon, essentially the exact same car, only completely different in scope and purpose, if that makes any sense (it does to me).  Therefore, I feel a kinship to full-size '68 Fords. They're uniquely different from the other 1965–1968 big Fords, and I think—and apparently, I'm in the minority on this one—they're the best-looking of the era of very good Fords. 

While I loathed my father's rental-grade wagon, these rare XLs are a different story.

Available only as two-doors, either as a fastback like this one or a convertible, the XL was Ford's sporty full-size offering. Ford associated the XL name with "Extra Lively," a tip of the bumper to the sporting elan these cars were supposed to have. Tom's is equipped with a 390-cubic-inch two-barrel, 265-gross-rated-horspower V-8, that's maybe, give-or-take, 180-hp net. A four-barrel 390 was also available, rated at 315 (gross) horsepower, along with limited-availability 427- and 428-cubic-inch engines. The 427 was rated at 390 horsepower, while the 428 made 340.

Judging by the buckets, console, and shifter, this one may have the optional GT Equipment Group. The GT package added a number of performance-oriented goodies, including special suspension, wide-oval tires, power front disc brakes, and available distinctive exterior stripes. XLs could be ordered with three- and four-speed manual transmissions; this one appears to have Ford's C6 three-speed automatic.

Introduced for 1967, the Ford XL continued through 1970 and was positioned as the sporty member of Ford's full-size lineup, a rung below the luxury-oriented LTD and above the more conventional Galaxie 500, and the entry-level Custom 500 and Custom.

Would my woe-begone childhood have been less miserable had my father driven home one day in this rather than the Ranch Wagon? Of course not, but at least I'd have something physically tangible to remember him positively by. 

In its day, with the fastback roofline, buckets, console, and even just the two-barrel 390 engine, this car was totally badass. I'd love to be able to say that my father wasn't the man I needed him to be, which is sad but true, but at least he could have driven a wicked-cool car. Such is life. 

My plan is to find a salvage company willing to haul all this stuff away and send Tom the bill. Naturally, we'll give him an ultimatum first; get your crap out of here ASAP or else. 

It's getting late in the year, though, so this may have to wait until spring. It's not like corporate is on me to get this done now anyway. That'll give me five or six months to watch it all sink further into the ground. Five or six months more to try to make sense of it all too. 

Wish me luck.