Some Fun Stuff

Here I will collect some things I have come across that were either funny or surprising. If you have some interesting things to share yourself, let me know!

The unhandy door handle
There was once a little discussion on the Roadfly forum, making allusion to how funny it is when people who don't know the car are trying to figure out how to open the passenger door.
Read it.

The long-lost E21 promotion vid
I once came across a short little promotion video clip from around 1975 or 1976, when the European 4-cyl E21s were introduced. It's in German, but it's still worth to take a look... It should bring back memories to most of you (not to me however, I wasn't born until '82 :)
Take a look.

The 320/6 redlining vid
So, ever wondered what the small six in the 320/6 sounds like at 6400rpm? Watch this little vid of my revcounter going all the way up and enjoy that brutal, roaring but sexy sound that comes from the excited engine. [/end poetry]
Check it out.

The movie stunt cars
Did you know a couple of E21's were wrecked in the process of making the movie 'The Accidental Spy' with Jackie Chan? It may be fun to wreck cars, but I sure felt my heart sink when I saw that black 323i crushed to pieces. Here are some screenshots taken from the film:
Pic 1 - Pic 2 - Pic 3 - Pic 4 - Pic 5

The bad of luck
So, you have a nice and smooth E21 Alpina? You're taking absolute great care of it? You open the door with silk gloves not to scratch the paint?
Better watch out for terrain collapses then, it just might be your bad luck day today...
View photo (thanks to Jeroen for this one).

The cracked head
Yes, the M20 engines have the reputation of cracking their head if they overheat. Murphy's law being what it is, it happened to me. The crack ran over three of the seven cam bearings (almost half of the head's length!) and was easily visible to the naked eye. I took a closeup picture of one of the cam bearings. Pretty scary that it cracks that bad, if you ask me.
Don't crack your head on this.

The heavy modifications
We all know that the German car tuner Baur modified some E21's into cabrio's. However, some people wanted to go modifying the car on their own. Here's some of the most special mods:

Handy if you want to keep it practical	Way to impress the neigborhood!
Couldn't wait for the E30 Touring	It sure looks fast

The infamous federal bumper
Look at it on the bright side. It is so much better than the euro bumper in accidents that it will not be harmed or damaged at all. It will transmit all damage straight through onto the car. The question remains, can it be recycled?

Look how efficient it is!

It may be ugly, but it's effective :)

Before & After
Well, it's pretty nice to see everything inside the engine bay getting thouroughly cleaned. My engine had 23 years of dust, leaked oil, grease, dirt, ... anyway it looked like my hair if it hadn't been washed in two weeks. So I put some pictures of things before cleaning and after cleaning together. Quite a transformation!
Photo: you can almost eat off of it.

The Alpina 333i
Nic gave me this three-page article about the Alpina 333i, built with the 633CSi engine (M30). Check it out:
Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3

The oil filler cap
Okay, here's Murphy's law again breathing down my neck. So, I was enjoying myself taking a rather sharp highway turn at 130km/h when suddenly I hear a loud clanging noise coming from under the engine, then I heard something fall down and bump up and down between the road and the underside of the car, and after that everything went back to normal, the engine still ran fine.
Not seeing any trouble, I decided I could drive the rest of the trip home and see what's wrong in the next day's boardlight. After a dull and uneventful further trip home I went to bed.
The next morning, thinking of the incident, I decided to inspect the engine bay. After popping the hood, surprise! Everything was drenched in oil, including the air filter and the underside of the hood. Turns out my oil filler cap had decided to go AWOL on me. Took me a good bit of cleaning and ten bucks for a replacement cap to sort this one out.
Really that Murphy guy is going through too much trouble.

The donutting vid
Nic sends a short video where he shows off the sheer power coming from this M42 powerplant and giving hell to his rear tires. I probably should shoot some rubber-burning pranks with some old tires myself, could always make for funny stuff. Meanwhile,
Check out Nic!

The movie stunt cars, take two
Why is it that if they need cars to be wrecked in movies, they always take E21's? I recently watched the german movie 'Lola rennt', and sure enough, there's an E21 getting totalled in there as well. First a little accident on the front corner, but then there's a fairly heavy frontal accident with another car. This E21 is a little pimped out though. Custom rimms, white grilles and kidneys, furry fluffy wheel, and mirrors that appear to have been stolen from the starship USS Enterprise:
Pic 1 - Pic 2 - Pic 3 - Pic 4

The movie stunt cars, take three
My word, it is unbelievable! Another E21 wrecked in a movie! This time, an E21 gets overrun by a monstertruck in Luc Besson's french movie 'Taxi3'. Nobody would ever notice this E21 there because it only appears very briefly, but my trained eye spotted it, so I took a screenshot. The french Taxi movie series is pretty good though. Good fun.
Pic 1

Original BBS advert
Here is some more nostalgia. This advert, dating from 1984, tempts E21 320i owners in the US to upgrade to 13, 14 or 15 inch BBS rimms and BBS front and rear spoilers, complete with aerodynamic technology to reduce the drag coefficient of your car. Impressive :)
View advert