Driven #5;- BMW Z4 sDrive35i

This article has since been republished in an updated form on www.hooniverse.com

Once upon a time, BMW was very good at preserving its principles. The famously stubborn brand said it "would never sell a front wheel drive car", a promise first rescinded by using the MINI brand as a workaround, and the more brazenly with the MINI-base 2 Series Active Tourer. For a long while, there "would never be a turbocharged M car", owing to the fear of corrupting throttle response sharpness - though that fear, it turn out, was later quashed by twin-blown engines in the most recent M3 and M5.

BMW also once strenuously denied they’d ever put a folding hard-top on a Z4. A sports car didn’t need one, they said. With the 3-Series they had held off from folding hardtops until they found a way of packaging one effectively without it ruining the weight distribution. 
 They finally managed, but you have to assume that they worked some kind of witchcraft to fit one on the E89 Z4 without exchanging the original's no-frills premium for no-thrills tedium.

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How It All Began

5^th June 1993. I remember it well. I hadn't long been twelve, it was a beautiful, sunny weekend and the summer holidays were looming on the horizon. My Mother hadn't yet got her driving license, so we took advantage of the glorious Essex sunshine for a nice walk into Frinton for shopping. My pocket money at the time was a meagre £1.20, enough for a pocket full of sweets, maybe an ice-cream.

I was rubbing the coins in my pocket together as we entered Graham Westcott's newsagent and rushed straight to the racks low-budget sweeties. I reared up to a halt some distance short of my target, though as if I had received instruction from on high. The voices were telling me to head towards the motoring magazines. There, shouting at me from eye level “We're first to drive the all new Ferrari V12”.

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