{"id":302,"date":"2015-07-19T19:12:53","date_gmt":"2015-07-19T10:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/?p=302"},"modified":"2015-07-19T19:12:53","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T10:12:53","slug":"they-call-me-mr-m5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/?p=302","title":{"rendered":"They call me ‘Mr M5’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BMW-20150121-2\"<\/a>\"BMW-20150121-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Male Australians of my generation have the car fantasy gene.\u00a0 Second hand cars in Australian by the ’60s and ’70s were both plentiful and cheap courtesy of a\u00a0growing car production\u00a0industry and\u00a0a middle class that could afford new cars.<\/p>\n

My first car was a Holden 1962 FB station wagon that cost about AUD$200.\u00a0 By most standards it was a horrible car and whilst not quite unsafe at any speed was certainly primitive by today’s models.\u00a0 Pre-war and early post war cars were cheap and many people became collectors.\u00a0 I had friends that collected Wolseley’s, Rovers, motorbikes, of various flavours and for a while I was a Citroen collector of just about anything Citroen.\u00a0 Languishing away in a friend’s country garage I still have a 1951 Citroen Normale\u00a0of the Traction Avant variety.\u00a0 Over the course of about 10ish years, I must have owned\u00a0about 20\u00a0Citroens and drove most of them as daily transport.<\/p>\n

Travel and living overseas curtailed the collecting\u00a0and usually I bought what made sense at the time such as\u00a0a small Mazda station wagon in the Solomons, a pick-up truck for dive gear in LA.\u00a0 It wasn’t until I came to Tokyo and had a financial windfall that I could actually afford something exotic.\u00a0 Realising I had never owned a sports car of any kind and probably having a minor fit of mid-life crisis, I bought a second hand 1991 Porsche 911 Turbo.<\/p>\n

You got what you paid for – an incredibly quick car that would give motorbikes a fright, a car that expected you, the driver to know what you were doing and a car that is DNA imprinted as a head turner (or the car you had to pass on the highway).\u00a0 I had a lot of fun and whilst I never wound it out to it’s full potential, I will admit to getting to a point when the eye movement between speedo and road became such that I thought now would be a really good time to ease off and did.<\/p>\n

As much as the Porsche was fun, I realised I wasn’t a sports car person.\u00a0 I prefer the Q-car, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the sleeper.\u00a0 A friend stuffed a 4 cylinder engine into a Citroen 2CV and we drove it around Europe to both\u00a0the\u00a0amusement and surprise of\u00a0bystanders and other motorists.\u00a0 During a trip to Germany about the same time, it was an early BMW M5 that caught my eye.\u00a0 Driven with a complement of (it seemed) grandmothers sliding by us at about 200kph (125mph) and deep in conversation they whished past.\u00a0 I say ‘whished’ as if it had been an exotic sports car, ‘roar’ would be the description but not the M5.\u00a0 All seemingly very sedate but in fact well\u00a0over most countries speed limits.<\/p>\n

Since then, I’ve kept tabs and occasionally counted my pennies to see if one was in my realm.\u00a0 Owning a car though in busy, clogged Tokyo is not a rational decision\u00a0but I did.\u00a0 By this time I was in the BMW camp so every so often gravitated to the M side of the showroom, sighed and went back to the sensible side.\u00a0 Though I will admit\u00a0we did have Z4 for short time and that was also enjoyable.\u00a0 The E60 M-5 seemed to be everything I could want in a Q-car, 500+ Hp, an engine that engineering-wise is both unusual and is considered a high enough water mark to win awards.\u00a0 So\u00a0I waited.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until we moved to Hokkaido that factors worked in taking this off the bucket seat list and into the garage.\u00a0 Hokkaido has open roads that with care, you can stretch a car’s legs, we have a garage that can accommodate such a beast (whispered quietly – will fit 4 cars at a pinch).\u00a0 We got lucky with the finances, needed a second car and couldn’t find anything newish that appealed.\u00a0 Proof that women do listen when men start waxing lyrically about engineering things, my wife suggested ‘what about an M5, you’ve always wanted one’\u00a0 At that point I realised I had married perfection.<\/p>\n

The search\u00a0was on.\u00a0It had to be the later version of the E60 body style with the V10 motor, it had to be\u00a0that fantastic blue\u00a0with black leather, it had to be right-hand drive (I’m lazy – LHD in a RHD country is tedious) and it had to be in the budget.\u00a0 Earlier versions were easy to find but the Lehmann Shock had reduced the number of imports of the later versions.\u00a0 Wait, wait, wait……<\/p>\n

Regular visits to BMW pre-approved site and goo-net.com and wait, wait, wait.\u00a0 Finally a Tokyo dealer had something.\u00a0 Yes!\u00a0 All of the above and mileage not low but acceptable.\u00a0 Thoughts of how to get this back to Hokkaido – road\/ferry trip?\u00a0 By this time winter and snow was with us.\u00a0 Luckily the dealer would ship to our home address.\u00a0 Wait, wait, wait… whilst papers etc were sorted out.\u00a0 (In Japan, you cannot just buy a car, the local police has to visit your planned parking address to see if you have sufficient car space – on the street in front of the house, doesn’t count).<\/p>\n

Finally the big day arrives and Mr M5 is delivered.\u00a0 Life with an M5 begins.\u00a0 I’m nervous, Kaiju\u00a0sighs, looks about his new home\u00a0and waits.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Male Australians of my generation have the car fantasy gene.\u00a0 Second hand cars in Australian by the ’60s and ’70s were both plentiful and cheap courtesy of a\u00a0growing car production\u00a0industry and\u00a0a middle class that could afford new cars. My first car was a Holden 1962 FB station wagon that cost about AUD$200.\u00a0 By most standards … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marknavin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}