BMW event in Norway

I was at a BMW car club event this weekend. My E30 days are over, so my wife and I went with our 116i through some rather
scenic Norwegian countryside. There were plenty of E30s at the event.

I made a picture album if you want to see:
Facebook album
(Norwegian subtitles)



We had an autoX competition as well. I lost out to an E46 325ti, but beat cars like E46 M3, E92 335d, E82 1M and E21 M2 (S14).
We ended up third in a quiz rally, and won the price for longest drive to the event.

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Ove Kvam
I made a picture album if you want to see:

Cool! Can I still be in the group if I admit that I'm most interested in the RX-2? Did it have the original rotary engine?

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We had an autoX competition as well. I lost out to an E46 325ti, but beat cars like E46 M3, E92 335d, E82 1M and E21 M2 (S14).
We ended up third in a quiz rally, and won the price for longest drive to the event.

Great! Of course, you know that the car is the least important part of autocrossing, right? Someone explained to me once a long time ago that autocross success is 75% driver, 20% tires, and 5% everything else. That's been pretty close to my experience over the years. I'll never forget the event when a newbie driver in a Lotus Elise got smoked by a local hotshoe driving a Toyota Yaris. The poor guy couldn't figure out what happened. For years, our fastest local driver won lots of events in an old, stock Saturn SC that was literally his grocery-getter.

__________
Dave
'91 325iX

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Dave_G

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Ove Kvam
I made a picture album if you want to see:

Cool! Can I still be in the group if I admit that I'm most interested in the RX-2? Did it have the original rotary engine?

The RX-2 is not so unlike the E30, so I guess that would be okay!
The owner wasn't there, so I don't know what it had under the hood.

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We had an autoX competition as well. I lost out to an E46 325ti, but beat cars like E46 M3, E92 335d, E82 1M and E21 M2 (S14).
We ended up third in a quiz rally, and won the price for longest drive to the event.

Great! Of course, you know that the car is the least important part of autocrossing, right? Someone explained to me once a long time ago that autocross success is 75% driver, 20% tires, and 5% everything else. That's been pretty close to my experience over the years. I'll never forget the event when a newbie driver in a Lotus Elise got smoked by a local hotshoe driving a Toyota Yaris. The poor guy couldn't figure out what happened. For years, our fastest local driver won lots of events in an old, stock Saturn SC that was literally his grocery-getter.

I guess I have some experience with autoX, with close to 100 participations under my belt. But when all the drivers have
some experience and skills, the car plays a more important part. There was a woman driving an E32 735iA, and she didn't
have much of a chance against the smaller cars.

The guys with hot cars and lacking autoX experience mostly made drifting runs, with lots of tire smoke, to demonstrate
that they didn't try to win the competition. They did however win the audience.

The F20 116i corners really well, and has quick steering and good brakes. The problem is the turbo lag in hairpin
corners. Going from coasting to full power, the engine takes quite a while to build up the power again. At the
autoX nationals last year, there were 7 hairpins in the course, and I lost half a second against the naturally aspirated
cars at each one, ending up 3.5 seconds behind. That is almost an eternity in autoX.