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Vacation fun!

6K views 6 replies 6 participants last post by  aleena212 
#1 · (Edited)
I can't give exact coordinates of where we were when this happened, as apparently one can incriminate ones-self on the internet now-a-days, but let's just say it wasn't in my home State of California, and the road has epic curves in it.
We were coming home to Cali on this mountainous road, the weather was crystal clear, temp about 79 degrees. Traffic was light, 2 lanes in our direction, and we were passing groups of slower cars, on the left, on the right, where-ever the opportunities presented themselves. Some of the locals in this area pride their abilities to navigate this pass, and take offense to being passed by Cali drivers, and will take up chase upon presentation of the Cali plate on the rear of the car. (Note: Bimmer plate only up front.)
We cruised past an E-class Mercedes, and a Lexus IS350, both of which were moving at a pretty good pace, but perhaps 10 MPH slower than ours. As soon as the Merc driver saw me in his mirrors he picked up the pace, so I waited until the next turn to make my move as I didn't want to make this an acceleration contest.
I took him through the turn, and accelerated away, and noticed he was giving chase, so I hit the next 2 turns a little more aggressively, and watched him fade in my mirrors, all the while noticing what looked like an awful lot of body-roll on his car. I thought they handled better than that!
The Lexus, seeing what's going on, also decides to give chase. He has about an 80 HP advantage over our lowly 3, but either the Lexus is no match for the handling of the 3, or the driver is un-skilled. Either way, he is barely keeping up with the Merc, who is accelerating hard on the straight-aways, but continues to lose ground every time we negotiate the twisties.
The best part was that I wasn't even in 'road-race-mode'. I was trying to go as fast as I could through the turns without the hard acceleration in, brake hard, accelerate out hard method, as my wife was in the car, and I had to behave myself, and I was still pulling away! Once I put a half mile distance on these two I just did enough to keep them back there.
The balance of power and handling of these cars continues to amaze me the more I drive it. Driving should be fun, and this car is!
 
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#4 ·
Nice little run there, bighorns!

A couple of years ago, I actually had a bit of playtime on a nice twisty back road not too far from where I live. I had just started a bit playtime(it's a fairly narrow, 2 lane, un-devided but freshly paved road) in the 'ol e30, and rather quickly came up on nice looking 540. The guy noticed my little car getting bigger in his rear-view and he started to push things a little bit to keep me at bay...likely thinking that since I was in an old 1986 3 series, he wouldn't have any issues keeping out in front of me. Needless to say, he didn't seem to have too much fast twisty experience in his 5er(pretty sure he was the kind to buy the car as a status thing) and I was tucked up pretty close for a good number of corners. It was getting rather frustrating that he was taking all the fun out of my drive, so I backed off about 75 meters to give him space. He kept up his 'pace' and eventually, at the exit of a fun little tight, downhill corner, he actually couldn't hold it and ran himself in to the ditch! Luckily for him, it was a nice, easy roll-out and he didn't hit anything. He was just rolling back up close to the road when I dropped a gear, took the corner, stomped on it, and zipped rather expeditiously away from him. He gave me a not so happy look as I accelerated out of the corner and he started growing smaller in my rear-view. I assume that he thought that because he had WAY more HP than me(not to mention way more weight) he wouldn't have any issues holding my old, underpowered, non-airbagged, non-v-8'td Bimmer off...
Needless to say, I had a stupid, shit-eating grin on my face all the way home after that little rip. After-all, he should have just pulled aside and let me pass him, serves him right(and maybe now, he appreciates his car as so much more than what he likely bought it for)!
 
#5 ·
@PhatCat: it's always fun to 'push' people, then watch them get out of shape, especially when it's a nice car!
This whole trip I kept commenting to my wife about how other drivers were gauging how fast they thought they could corner based on my speed through the turn, and were in for a shock when they got out of shape.
My favorite was a pickup truck that tried to out-accelerate me as I was passing on a long straight-away leading into a long, sweeping curve. Rather than trying to outrun him I merely maintained my speed knowing that he would have to brake for the turn. His pride got the best of him, and I easily pulled away through the turn as he fought to maintain control. It looked pretty cool in my mirrors!
 
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