Welcome to the $82,470 “small” BMW.
I suppose it’s not that outrageous; correct the $34,810 MSRP of the original 1988 M3 to modern Bernankified pesos, and it’s just over seventy grand for a car that had less than half the power of this 2016 M3 Competition/Executive Package and absolutely none of the luxury accoutrements.
But here’s the crazy part: for Brayden, the car’s owner, this is the cheaper of the two 2016 M3s that he just bought.
His name’s not Brayden, but it rhymes with Brayden, and that’s good enough. He’s also asked me to blur his face in the photographs.
“Too many people on the Internet get angry at the idea that a 19-year-old has a new car at all, much less two new M3s. But compared to a lot of my friends, who have already moved onto supercars, this feels like I’m being responsible. And I paid for the cars myself.”
Six years ago, when Brayden was a teenager, he became fascinated with the “darknet” and with the emerging technology known as Bitcoin.
“I just asked for a thousand Bitcoins for Christmas, and I said I didn’t want anything else.”
Brayden’s father, a square-jawed, silver-haired man who accompanied Brayden to our meeting at Mid-Ohio because, in his words, “I’m not a helicopter dad … well, maybe a little,” has worked in finance for 35 years. He thought the gift would teach Brayden about the fragility of get-rich-quick schemes. The two of them then sat back and watched a wild market ride that at one point gave Brayden’s $2,180 Christmas gift a paper value of nearly two and a half million dollars.
Brayden held onto his Bitcoins through thick and thin and thick again. It didn’t hurt that his parents leased him two new BMW coupes in a row, on his 16th and 18th birthdays. But with his 20th approaching, Brayden sat down with his parents and decided to convert 530 bitcoins to cold hard cash. It was a harder process than they imagined, taking nearly a month to make the transactions with reputable parties who would pay in USD, and they “overpaid” the taxes to mollify a Federal government that has been notoriously suspicious of transactions in blockchain currency. When all was said and done, they had about $200,000 to play with. Brayden bought himself a new M3 with every possible option, including a special BMW Individual paint shade, at a cost of just over $100,000.
“The problem,” Brayden explains, “is that I didn’t want to track the car. It was literally too nice. So I bought a track rat.” That “track rat” is the $82,000 DCT M3 before me, with Competition and Executive Packages but no Individual options.
“This is the bitch, man. We don’t treat her with respect. Gonna let the paint get scratched a little. Let’s spank this bitch,” Brayden says, and he hops into the passenger seat. We’re running in the Instructor group of the local BMWCCA. It’s a very well-run event and the organizers have, thankfully, limited the number of cars on-track. They’ve also fully staffed the flag stations. For any long-standing veteran of half-ass trackdays, such as your humble author, it’s heaven.
So what makes an M3 a Comp Package? Well, to begin with, there’s a modest power bump to 444 horses. But the M3 didn’t need any more power. You might argue that it needed less power. The turbocharged straight-six can be both unsubtle and unexpected in its torque delivery, particularly when rolling the throttle through fast corners. But BMW’s owner base expects a direct MSRP-to-dyno correlation, so there you go.
It has lightweight seats sourced from the new M4 GTS; they’re comfortable both for Brayden’s slight frame and my overfed one. There’s custom stitching on the seat belt that will no doubt be copied, badly, by Chinese factories in 10 years when people start building Comp Package “replicas” from thoroughly worn-out 320i sedans. There’s a set of 20-inch dub wheels and a loud exhaust.
The rest of the package is “tuning” to the steering and suspension. The official media line on the M3 Comp Package is, “It’s purer and closer to what the M3 should have been from the beginning,” according to BMWBlog. I don’t know about that. This is still a massive tank of a “compact” sedan, wide and comfortable inside, and oddly reminiscent of my father’s 733i. It’s a big car. And, it must be said, a fast one. For its first trick, performed 10 seconds after Brayden and I leave the pits, the M3 effortlessly demolishes a C5 Z06 in a straight line. It’s not close. Though we had entered the the track a full car length behind the Chevrolet and we were moving slower to boot, by the time we get to the chicane that’s part of Mid-Ohio’s “Club” configuration, the Vette is entirely visible in the rearview.
I’ve left the M3 in “MDM,” or M Dynamic Mode, at the request of Brayden’s father. Doing so curbs the worst of the Bimmer’s torquey excesses as we hammer out of the Keyhole and into the long back straight. It’s also probably costing us some corner exit speed, because the engine is completely on vacation until I have the steering wheel fully unwound. Yet the M3 leaps easily to over 140 mph before I brake like a sissy at the 500 mark for The Esses. That turns out to have been a good decision. Even with performance pads and fluid, this car in no way feels over-braked. In that respect, at least, it’s a classic BMW. There’s plenty of pedal travel from the first corner.
This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that the Competition Package changes make a huge difference. I really can’t say that. Compared to the pre-production M3 that I drove here two years ago, this car is short on brakes and long on grip. The former is because it’s missing the $8,150 carbon-ceramic option. Deliberately so; Brayden expects to replace brakes a lot on his track rat, so he chose the steel brakes even though he has the M Ceramics on his street M3.
The extra grip is likely because Brayden has a policy, established since his first BMWCCA weekend last year, of buying new tires for every track-day weekend. Even this one; although the car’s still on a temp tag, Brayden swapped out the rubber because “you don’t know how much grip you lose when the car’s on a boat, exposed to all that weather, no reason to be cheap about it.” My attempts to buy his old tires at a discount were unsuccessful. Regardless, the car sticks very well. It steers … pretty okay. You never have the sense of an immediate connection between wheel and tire, and you’re always aware of all the weight just waiting to start working on the camber-challenged outside edges of the staggered (front: 265/30 R20, rear: 285/30 R20) Michelins. It’s an unfortunate situation that the M3 absolutely needs wider rear tires to get out of any corner without looping under full power, but when you get to the start of the next corner, the car just isn’t as neutral as it could be. Not that you can’t adjust it with the throttle — but MDM will stop you cold with those kind of hijinks.
Brayden expresses surprise and a little dismay that I’ve just left the double-clutch transmission in “D” for my first few laps, so I start making manual shifts to pacify him. The truth is that you could drive around Mid-Ohio using only fourth gear and you’d still catch nearly everything on wheels ahead of you. I’m staying in third for the slow sections, shifting into fourth before the blind right-hander into “Thunder Valley” to settle the car and keep the MDM from pulling the fuse on my fun. Fifth gear is required for the back straight — that’s all.
Never in the session are we passed. In fact, the first time I see another car anywhere near our back bumper is during the cool-down lap, when a 997 GT3 Cup Car nonchalantly blows by us in the Carousel. This M3 is the proverbial gun in a knife-fight Instructor session full of E36 and E46 M3s and the occasional Porsche. Everything else out here is operating in slow motion.
We have enough time left for me to take Danger Girl out for a quick ride. She’s completely unimpressed. “I like the Lexus (RC-F) so much better,” is her verdict. “This doesn’t sound very good, it seems slow-witted in corners.” But she has to admit that the engine puts up big numbers and pulls hard. They don’t call it the Bavarian Motor Werke or whatever for nothing.
Given Brayden’s level of funding, I’d probably get a Viper ACR, an American Iron NASA racer, and an Accord Touring to cover his list of needs. But I can’t blame the kid for being passionate about BMW. There was a time I felt that way, too.
At the end of the day, we load the M3 back into the trailer and Brayden laughs at all the rock chips on his brand-new car. His father is pleased that nobody crashed; I’m pleased that I didn’t chew up the property of a very nice young man who just wanted to share his enthusiasm with the Best & Brightest. After we shake hands and prepare to part ways, he looks at Danger Girl’s Fiesta and a thoughtful look passes across his countenance.
“Don’t give up on your dreams,” he says. “That’s what my dad always told me, and he was right. It was a tough ride with those Bitcoins, but I made it through. Someday you’ll be where I am — waking up every day with two cars that you love.” And before I can get my helmet packed, his twenty-four-foot Haulmark is gone, trailing Dad’s champagne LX570, sailing out the exit gate and on to the next adventure.
[Images: © 2016 Danger Girl/The Truth About Cars]
The problems of the wealthy are not the same as yours or mine.
Living like this kid must be fucking awesome.
Disagree. I know from experience that kids who grow up with this kind of wealth usually just view it as normal. Anything less falls short of expectations and then they’re unhappy.
They also often don’t learn what real work or its rewards feel like. The result is that they equate money with accomplishment, even if it’s handed to them. When you start measuring your – and others’ – worth by the money you have, and not what you do or are, you’re going to run into problems.
Wise words.
Yeah if I was wealthier I wouldn’t have sold my bitcoins for like $2 each during med school to pay for food. Never had as many as this kid but still…would have paid all my med school loans instead of just for groceries for a couple of months. Ended up spending a year’s worth of residency salary to buy the damned coins back which has worked out well but damn do I wish I had just held onto those bitcoins. Actually, I had heard about them even earlier but had decided to do [email protected] to try and find cures for diseases. Oh well.
“Don’t give up on your dreams,” he says. “That’s what my dad always told me, and he was right. It was a tough ride with those Bitcoins, but I made it through. Someday you’ll be where I am — waking up every day with two cars that you love.”
A Tahoe and a FiST?
Don’t forget the Cup car, brah.
Jack, I’m so sorry you’re poor :(.
Two VW Phaetons of course.
Wow, talk about click bait for rich kid haters. This ought to be fun.
I would bet it still won’t get anywhere near as bad as that piece on the young woman who had her old Corolla shipped to Hawaii.
Eh, I’m less on that than I am “yet another AidenBradenJadenKaydenZayden.”
I just wrote invites to our preschooler’s birthday party. 2 Aedens, 1 Jaden, 2 Kaidens. And to think I just gave my kids boring names.
My daughter’s birthday was earlier this month. We had a Henry, Savannah, Lauren, Lillian, and Natalie. Of course, we also had 3 or 4 that were misspelled versions of modern popular names.* My daughter’s name peaked in popularity back in the 1920s.
* I would say that 1 in 10 people spell my name right the first time. I’ve always hated that I have to correct people on the spelling. I’d hate to think of how many hours of my life I’ve wasted correcting the spelling of my name. People think they are being cute or an individual with the special spellings, but it is really just an inconvenience.
I want to reach through that picture and punch this a$$hole in his smug little face. Hard enough to do some damage.
Born halfway to home plate and has the temerity to lecture a man more than twice his age about “hanging in there.”
I was generally okay with the kid (though he looked exactly as I expected, annoying) until that line.
I’m going to ask my parents for $2,000 for Christmas, in mixed securities.
“Born halfway to home plate and has the temerity to lecture a man more than twice his age about “hanging in there.””
yeah, that was incredibly crass and tone deaf. I think people are resentful not so much because someone has money, but the way they carry themselves. I was reading about a story that ran on NPR a while ago: http://www.npr.org/2016/08/11/489472679/theres-a-home-renovation-boom-but-good-luck-finding-a-contractor
” Aurora Custom Builders, is finishing up a $140,000 kitchen renovation. The homeowner, Teri Larson, is beaming over her new stone backsplash and countertops. “I think it looks spectacular,” she says.
Larson says after the housing crash she was feeling the pain in her own way. She didn’t have enough equity in her house to get a loan to pay for a renovation. So for years her family was knocking into each other in a very tiny and badly designed kitchen with fake wood plastic countertops.
“It was horrible,” she says. “We had refrigerator doors banging into dishwasher doors and two people couldn’t move around in here. It was hideous.””
That’s her definition of a “hardship.” Fake wood countertops and having to wait to do a $140,000 renovation.
If it makes you feel any better, he’s going to lose six figures in depreciation in the next 2 years.
Halfway? That’s only second base. More like 12 feet from home plate. And if he falls (which sounds likely), daddy will be there to pick him up and brush him off.
My bad… I meant halfway from third to home. :) But 12 feet is more accurate.
No joke. He earned none of this. The bitcoin payoff was chance. He blew half of this once-in-a-lifetime turn of fortune on toys because he was born in a station where his parents leased him 2 BMWs anyway and he never has to worry about falling hard enough to knock the silver spoon out of his mouth.
He’s 19 though so I’ll give him some slack. I remember how irrational I was at that age and how simple the world seemed. The day may come where he will see statements like this and realize he had a lot of perspective to gain:
“Too many people on the Internet get angry at the idea that a 19-year-old has a new car at all, much less two new M3s. But compared to a lot of my friends, who have already moved onto supercars, this feels like I’m being responsible. And I paid for the cars myself.”
Even the ability to be irrational is a luxury at 19. When I was 19, I was thinking, “this Marine Corps college fund looks pretty appealing.” It was either that, or go assemble vacuum cleaners. And the Hoover factory shut down and moved to Mexico shortly thereafter. So I guess I’m glad I didn’t have the luxury of being irrational.
Actually while he asked for 1000 bitcoins he most likely has about 2500 because at it’s peak a bitcoin was about $1000, so if he had two and half million dollars of it he would have needed to have 2500 of them. 500 Bitcoins would represent only 20% of his initial holdings.
But yes, it’s a pretty stupid investment to go blow 20% of all your money on BMW M3’s, though I’m guessing this kid will eventually end up getting a high paying job in finance anyways.
Hes just a typical BMW owner really, smug and not very money smart. I think I’ve met only one or two BMW people I’d actually invite to supper (well one EX BMW owner).
While I give him credit for seeing the potential in digital currency and getting in on the bottom floor, his dad still made the initial investment on his behalf. Silver Spoon didn’t buy these cars, his dad did.
And as for the comment about it being a tough ride on those Bitcoins. Yes, it must have been hard sitting there watching them explode in value. Just the worst…
One thing that life has taught me is that the single largest factor in being “successful” (as in in wildly successful, I’m not talking about the steady process of building wealth) is luck, pure and simple.
Exactly why Lady Luck smiles upon some rather than others is a mystery, I do find it hard to blame her beneficiaries so long as they resist the temptation to claim all the credit.
“bootstraps” people refuse to recognize that there are both 1) people without boots, and 2) people who have had their bootstraps pulled up for them.
Aside from being showered with luck, being generally sociopathic and/or amoral is pretty much a prerequisite.
The number of people who become “wildly successful” who are neither is statistical noise.
This is the inverse of “poor people are poor because they’re lazy/dumb etc”
Seeing the world through a lens of envy and resentment will end up being the biggest obstacle to attaining significant material success. You can take that to the bank.
+1 on Derek. I’ve been around long enough to see very clearly that the harder I work, and the harder I try to take care of the other stakeholders in my business (customers, bosses, colleagues, community), the better “luck” I have.
my limited experience tells me that the sociopathic/amoral may succeed in the short term, but for the most part it catches up with them before too long. For every Kenneth Lay there’s more than one Tim Cook.
Onyx, sorry to burst your bubble, but there are plenty of successful people that are neither. Also sorry that you apparently haven’t figured out how to become one of them.
It’s a great psychological defense mechanism – justifying your circumstances based on your perceived moral superiority.
If it makes everybody feel better, I’m a sociopath who kills animals with his bare hands and I’m flat broke.
@baconator Agreed. Unfortunately, the good guys don’t always win, but the bad guys tend to lose far more often. Give someone enough rope and they always hang themselves.
True but the worst of lot gets the most attention. Especially in the age of news entertainment.
Look at that sweet gig Heather Bresch had come under fire for!
“If it makes everybody feel better, I’m a sociopath who kills animals with his bare hands and I’m flat broke.”
But you get to drive all kinda cool cars on tracks so, yeah, I’m envious.
@Jack Baruth
You may be broke, but you sure seem to be having a great time anyway. More power to ya!
I’d have a much bigger bank account if I had fewer and/or less interesting cars. But bank statements really aren’t much fun.
One of the gigs I had in my youth was putting out displays with pastries that worked on the honor system – people put money in the box for what they consumed. I placed these boxes in a good variety of areas – factory floor cafeterias to floors of the building with more mid-to-upper management types.
As is the business case with this set up being an honor system, a certain percentage of loss has to be accounted for in the plan. Guess which type of employees stiff me the most, and by a fairly large margin?
I certainly have hope that you guys are right, but lenses are certainly colored the other way from my personal business experience.
If I had $200K when I was 19 I probably would have spent it all on $1000 escorts and a 1977 Trans AM.
So buying two M3s isn’t that bad I guess.
When I first read your post I thought why would he want a fleet of Ford Escorts? Then my brain kicked in. Then I LOL’d. Yep, I would’ve done the same thing.
@bachwey- I’m right there with you. It wasn’t until I read your comment that I realized that I misunderstood what he meant.
LOL!
I was thinking “What *did* those radar detectors go for back then?”
Then: “Why would he want more than one?”
Then: “Oh, crap!”
There was actually one guy who won a lottery in Britain and bought a nice estate in an expensive neighbourhood.
Then he made a dirt track in the backyard, and bought tons of old cars so he and his friends could just trash them all the time. So yeah, $1000 Escorts could be fun in more than one way (or more than two-ways XD ).
Well, you’re from Florida.
I’d have bought a DeLorean and a big 4×4 pickup truck.
Wow! I wish I had the financial wisdom and taste of this guy. What a beautiful ride!
Oh come on.
This handle has great potential for satire. He just needs to post first in every single article. Makes me miss BTSR!
What happened to BTSR?
Broke the commenting rules almost immediately after they were established because he can’t control himself, and got banned.
There is a god. Called the mod.
What?! The kid made some serious money from Bitcoin. I also think the car is beautiful, though I’d probably lower it in the front just a tad and put on some spacers to make it a little more flush…
I genuinely can’t tell if this is adept trolling, bizarre coincidence (unlikely,) or one of the more depressing things I’ve seen on the internet.
Really though, regardless of which one is true, it’s basically a win for you.
“I just asked for a thousand Bitcoins for Christmas, and I said I didn’t want anything else.”
Oh, that’s all? Just a thousand dollars in Bitcoin for Christmas, eh?
The wealthy truly live in a different dimension. I don’t begrudge them their wealth, but an appreciation for it would be nice.
I recognize that making upper-mid 5 figures in the midwest, I’m better off than a percentage of the global population that I’d rather not care to think about.
But I do think about it. A lot. My 3 bedroom house in white (literally, our town name translates to “Great White”) suburbia is a palace, I have two (used)cars, a steady income, nobody has ever tried to kill me or my children, and my personal infant mortality rate is zero.
I’m incredibly blessed. As one of my friends has said, we’ve won the lottery. We were born in the US to parents who generally gave a crap and had the means to put that give-a-crap to good use. As such we live lives insulated from the life-and-death struggle of hundreds of millions of people all over the world, always able to satisfy our basic needs and still have some left over for wants. Granted, at this stage in life my luxury spending amounts to a 21″ flat screen and (hopefully) a robot floor cleaner to help keep our palace clean and for weaponized fun with the dog and small children, but that’s still more than can be said for, statistically speaking, everyone else.
Then Silver Spoon here tells some people who I’d already consider to be extremely successful (as if that matters, but it’s in context so let’s consider it anyways) to keep up the good work and try hard, one day you could make it like he has.
OMG Becky. I can’t even.
While I don’t doubt his father does very well financially, he asked for 1000 bitcoins, not $1000 in bitcoins. 1000 bitcoins in 2010 would have cost somewhere between $50 and $300 depending on when it was purchased – so not exactly a mind blowing present.
Looks like bitcoins now are worth around $580/coin so aside from the difficulties in actually making the exchange between currencies it really was a good investment.
I stand corrected. On my soapbox.
That’s never a good place to be…
From the article, the 1000 bitcoins cost $2180.
I stand correct. On my soapbox.
That’s always a good place to be…
Well you’re still slightly wrong because while he asked for 1000 bitcoins it’s clear that his father bought him many more than what he asked for. You can deduce this because they mention that at it’s peak his holdings were worth two and a half million which can only be true if he ended up buying around 2500 bitcoins (at it’s peak bitcoins were worth $1000).
So the amount he asked for must have been worth something like $800 at the time which does fit a very late 2010 valuation.
Weird – it didn’t even reach parity with USD until mid 2011.
Yup. I’ve got a physical coin someone gave me as a gag gift quite a few years ago. Joke’s on them, I guess.
“(literally, our town name translates to “Great White”)”
You live in Blanco Grande!
Not quite.
No, I’m afraid I’ll never get over Blanco Grande.
Hmm…maison blanc…weiss haus…
I know…Washington DC.
Shirley you can’t be serious…
Really well put. Opportunity plus luck, right?
Here is a kid who had the opportunity (his own computer, the ability to surf “dark web” sites at 13, and a father who could give him a $2100 gift even though he was pretty sure that money was going down the toilet) plus some luck that it went through the roof in value and he hung in there and didn’t bail when it was down.
What irks me is that I could easily have put $2100 into something other than car parts seven years ago…so it goes…
“What irks me is that I could easily have put $2100 into something other than car parts seven years ago…so it goes…”
+1. Who knew?
It’s nice of him to share the cars.
Interesting choice to put carbon ceramic brakes on the street car but not on the ‘track rat’.
God bless this family for taking the depreciation hits for us. As much as it’s easy to dislike high consumption wealthy people, low consumption wealthy people are ‘worse’ in that they return even less money to the real economy.
God bless the dad for driving an LX570 instead of a Tony Soprano wannabe Escalade.
Re: the under-braked car. I swear BMW and Honda have a ton in common – sweet engines, they both made motorcycles before cars, and they both go pretty light on the brakes.
I thought the same thing about the brakes. Track brakes on the street car, Street car brakes on the track car.
CCB life isn’t high enough to justify the replacement costs. Porsche guys do this all the time. They dump the CCBs when they wear out and go for steel rotors. I see its a 9k option so no telling what replacement costs are. For the ZR1 and the Z/28 a set of CCBs will set you back about 10k when you have to replace them or say if you did like a guy in a 911 did some years ago and emulate the final scene in Bullitt where Frank skidded across the median and wrecked his Mustang.
Last time I did a decent brake job on my former GT500 I sprang form DBA two-piece rotors up front and its single piece units out back plus fluid and not so serious Hawk HP+ pads the total bill (san labor since I do my own on simple things like brake replacements) was still cheaper than what it costs to replace a single rotor/pad assembly on the aforementioned ZR1 and Z/28. Even with some kick ass race pads I couldn’t see the cost going for much more than what it costs to replace a single carbon ceramic rotor & pads.
Hell I have to check but a buddy of mine checked on a set of rotors and pads for his GT350R and it was comparable to the brake job I did on the GT500 using all factory stuff.
Using CCBs for something like what this kid plans to do is a serious drain on the wallet unless they can achieve a life greater than say what 4 or 5 sets of steel brakes would. If you can only get the equivalent of 2 to 3 times the life of the steel brakes it makes more sense to run them instead. Well if you don’t have especially deep pockets.
I’m sure there are folks out there that can reach into the cup holder in the car and dig out enough spare change to have a set of CCBs flown in and swapped out during a pit stop.
1) I’m not going to give a 19 year old with 2 M3s the benefit of the doubt on whether or not they did a cost benefit analysis.
2) My understanding is that CCB units are selected for their more consistent performance at high temperature ranges, not their cost effectiveness.
Personally, I couldn’t imagine buying an 80k car to be my track rat. But what I really can’t imagine is buying an 80k track rat, buying fresh tires every weekend, and then trying to save some money on the brakes.
Trying to follow the “logic” for getting the carbon ceramic brakes on the street car but not the track car makes my head hurt. An $82k “track rat” and he’s worried about the cost of brake replacement? He’ll fit in well with the crowd that buys an S-class then sells it the day it is out of warranty because they are afraid of an $800 repair once or twice a year.
Also, I hope Jack made up the comment about tires losing grip by being exposed to weather on the boat.
That’s a great question! I’ve heard contradictory information about BMW’s origins but I think it started as a machine shop that made parts and they started making license built motorcycles and airplane engines in the same year (1914). In 1917, the company
The roundel was apparently just selected to feature the state colors of Bavaria. I don’t know of any propellers that were painted white in WW1. But who knows?
I’ll just pass on making pithy observations about this kid (he’s rich and it is what it is, folks), and say I hope Jack and the missus had a good time tracking this car. Enjoyed the review.
Drove the M3 Competition package on Miami Speedway last week for free upwards of 130 MPH at BMW event.
Nice. But the synthesized exhaust noise inside was a bit much. vidDOTme/IfQ0(m2 run)
I disabled the Active Sound, much better, the exhaust is surprisingly loud and accounts for most of the noise I hear.
Is this car something you’d deem worthy of leasing as a daily driver/ occasional track car? A friend of mine that works for a dealer group has one, comp package, 6 speed, no options, and I am considering taking over the last 2 years of his lease. I’d keep my E39 M5 because at this point its not really depreciating and I’d be surprised if the M3 lasted much longer than the lease term.
The current M3 feels about the same size of an E39, the rear legroom is far better though while carrying ~500 lbs less. When looking for a 4 door sedan in 2016 that is RWD, 6-spd, and good handling…there aren’t many choices. That’s probably one of the biggest reasons I have this car. For reference, I have owned many BMW’s before and a 997 Carrera S prior to this car.
In terms of performance this car is on another level compared to past M3’s. The front end grip is immense, the high speed stability is impressive, and the acceleration is strong to say the least. I haven’t tracked this car but I have found the standard brakes quite up to the task for spirited driving in the canyons and such.
The downsides for me are a rather emotionless engine which comes along with being turbo and a sense of isolation from the car even with that solid mounted rear subframe. This is not necessarily a “BMW” problem but how cars are now. The sense of speed in this car is very easily masked, where you have to be doing rather illegal speeds to experience that “thrill.” Also the rear end on the non-comp package always keeps me on edge, I never fully trust it will stay planted in fast driving and hard acceleration, which the tires can often be overwhelmed with the power. It’s surprising how much they tuned the car for oversteer vs. understeer, not that I am complaining.
The exhaust is entertaining, it makes all types of overrun sounds and the cold start-up could be labeled almost as excessive. I find the auto rev matching actually very pleasant in city driving. In the end this is a comfortable 4-door sedan that could keep up with supercars from not long ago, but unlike old BMW’s I won’t be sad when it’s gone because it doesn’t have that emotional connection. Of course, I feel that is most cars these days. I would still pick this over its competition, because those cars are even more isolated let alone lacking a manual option and weighing significantly more. Lastly, on a subjective note, I feel the M3 body is one of the coolest looking sedans at this moment from a rear or 3/4 angle with its huge flared fenders.
I don’t begrudge luck of the kid, but wonder why 2x M3’s? Is that really the zenith of $200k for two sets of wheels? If one were into Bimmers, I could maybe see 1x M3 daily-driver thing, and then like classic 850 all after-market tweaked or something for the ‘cool’ fast one. But a ~400hp four-door $100k+ car is a relatively slow, plain, and expensive ‘track rat.’
Yeah, bit of money to burn and wanting a “track rat” to me would say perhaps a Caterham.
one to drive, and one to drive while fixing the first one.
Well, according to Jack, it isn’t slow.
Still, it’s dumb use of that money. Buy one 335i, which is faster than anyone can use on the street, plus a true beater track car, maybe an old MX-5 or something.
Then invest the money.
19 year olds are hardly known for their decision making prowess or taste. In that context I think he’s shown incredible, almost pained restraint. If I were his age I would have built a $100K Honda Prelude track car. To be fair, speed aside it sounds like it would have been more fun to drive.
I think this is the digital economy’s iteration of Zappa’s Bobby Brown.
What is the digital economy’s version of the tower of power?
Tiesto.
I was actually talking about the tower of power lyric in Zappa’s Bobby Brown.
Sorry, Quentin, but my comment has been bescheißt by a third party so I’ve disengaged.
I’m delicate that way.
I don’t know. The older I get, the less envy I feel towards people who have outrageous wealth. I appreciate the M3, but I don’t particularly lust after one. Maybe if I were to drive around in one for a few months I’d find it hard to go back to my lowly cars, but as it is, I’m not convinced that these people are enjoying their cars more than I am mine.
At one point in life I had a couple of clients. The husband was a stockbroker with – at times – a 7 figure income. But they were in an open marriage because he always had to work, to the point that he let her finish their European vacation by herself because he suddenly had to go back to work. The wife – a very nice lady who grew up modestly – and I ended up spending time together. I toured their palace of a suburban mansion, which was unfinished because the economy turned and they couldn’t afford to finish the details. Nevertheless, they had the downtown, beachfront 2 bedroom pied-a-terre on the 50th floor of a historic building, the Cayenne Turbo, etc, etc. She took me out to restaurants and attractions that I normally wouldn’t have been able to afford.
At one point she came to visit me in my dingy 700 sq ft apartment with the bed sheet for a curtain in the bedroom, and what shocked me is that she told me she envied my life. She envied the simplicity, the freedom I had to do what I wanted, and the fact that I didn’t have a $25,000/month mortgage and the stresses that come with it.
It seems to me that the greatest thing that money can buy is freedom, and you don’t necessarily need millions in order to afford that. Alternatively, some people with immense incomes often fail to buy it.
I’ve seen 18 year-olds in stripped-out track-prepped Civics worth maybe $3,000 tear it up like animals on the track. Their raw times weren’t anywhere near what an M3 could do, but I bet they were having more fun and learning a lot more about how to control their car, and isn’t that why we take our cars to the track in the first place?
My my, sounds like you might have enjoyed that open marriage benefit eh!
Haha. I wonder if the husband told him it was open marriage or if the wife just decided that was the situation after she met Juniper and her husband ditched her in Europe to go work.
He’d walk into the room while we were Skyping and greet me by name, so I’m inclined to believe he was aware of the situation.
It’s only a little bit of a violation of adviser responsibility and ethics at least.
Are former bicycle tour guides bound by adviser responsibility?
I think that’s covered in the Geneva Convention.
“I’m inclined to believe he was aware of the situation.”
I think that depends on what you and his wife were Skyping about when he walked in. Some guys are kind of clueless. Especially the 7-figure earning workaholic types.
Geneva Convention?
The tour was from Lausanne through Gstaad and ended in Interlaken, so we narrowly bypassed Geneva. I’m probably ok.
Sounds like there were opportunities to warn your clients about the “early withdrawal penalty”.
She didn’t own a pink Windstar, did she?
HAHAHAHA
Excellent.
I chuckled when I got to the Accord Touring. Got to get it in there!
Smart of his dad to let him blow every last cent of his windfall for which he deserves no credit. Now he actually will learn a lesson.
Not quite.
The remaining 1500 bitcoins should be worth just short of $750K net.
I’d wager a decent chunk of my IRA that my net worth will be higher than this kid’s in 30 years (well…until he inherits his parents’ estate).
He’s just going to be chasing speculator’s highs for the rest of his life because he hit on the first one, and that’s a good way to lose a lot of money.
This reminded me of the time my future 8 year old step daughter was inverted in the rear seat of her grandfather’s ’16 M5, scuffing the suede headliner with her nasty sneakers and he was just laughing about it.
That’s the way to do it. You don’t need a second track car or a winter car or any of this nonsense. Unless it’s a 250 GTO or a pre-WWII Bugatti, drive it and use it. That’s what it’s there for.
Yes. This dude pissed away money on a 2nd M series that will depreciate just as fast. It’s like buying two nice refrigerators. One to look at and the other to store food.
I wish he collected SuperDuty’s. I’d be alright with that.
@Tres – you’d love my co-worker. He has three.
# 1 : Jack _isn’t_ ” poor ” !.
Like me , he has a good life he’s carved out for himself .
” Let’s spank this bitch” .
Yep , just so , smart Kid : he had an idea of what he wanted and was willing to run with it , stick to it and get exactly where he wanted to go .
I too know lots of insanely rich folks and few are as happy and contented ad the average non drunk/drugged out Blue Collar worker bee is .
-Nate
I set up Euro MDM in my car, it actually allows for a serious amount of slide to the point I am pretty sure I could spin the car if I go too hot into a turn. It doubles the amount of yaw compared to the US MDM mode.
I actually now drive around the city streets with no stability control on as I went through two sets of rear rotors by 18k miles (thank you BMW for picking up the tab) which I can assume was the overactive traction control as the light was flickering constantly in 1st and 2nd gear…admittedly I have a heavy right foot. I agree, it needs more rear rubber, I have the 275/19’s and it is quite easy to overwhelm them.
“I’ve seen the way you drive, kid! You got a heavy foot!”
#Fast & Furious
Well, I actually enjoyed this little trip, Jack’s write-up; and his restraint. As for the kid, let’s not brand him as a sociopath, yet. He thinks his toys are cool, and like all boys, he wants to share so that other boys will say they’re cool, too. His “advice” was admittedly off-putting, but I guess he’s just parroting something he heard from his dad.
People in finance are different from the rest of us . . . and money is just the least of it. For the past 25 years, the smart guys didn’t go to law school — they went to B-school.
In the next 25 years, who knows?
The kid is young, give him a chance and see what happens.
As someone who went to private schools and had contact with some kids whose parents had serious money, I can say that it’s very difficult to have a clear view of the world when everything and everyone around you drips in wealth.
I remember when I was in high school, a friend’s mom drove me home after I spent the weekend in their downtown old-money house, and as we got into the suburbs and passed some modest, normal homes, the 6 year-old daughter asked, “Why are these houses so small?” She hadn’t been exposed to this before. This same friend lied about his dad’s Mercedes having the badges swapped, because among his clique it was embarrassing that Dad rolled in “only” a Mercedes S420. In the context of his unemployed high-school-educated mom complaining about receiving only a million dollars, the million dollar+ house, and custody of the kids (each of which had a 7 figure trust fund) upon leaving her husband after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, it’s not a surprise that their kids lacked financial perspective.
This 19 year-old Jayden probably really did “work” for his M3s compared to the kids around him. The fact that his investment was a zero-risk gift from his father who could easily afford to lose $2,000 while simultaneously funding his teenage son’s first two BMWs, while to many people losing that amount of money could put them on the brink of bankruptcy, is a completely foreign concept to him. When your friends are rolling in supercars that their parents paid for, an M3 (or two) paid for by an investment “you” made feels modest.
1) He’s not a sociopath. He’s a 19 year old male. If anyone can say with a straight face that they were a model of wisdom and cogent thought at 19, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Lord knows I was insufferable, and unfortunately for the B&B, you had to read my writing while I was still on the “immature brat” phase of my emotional and intellectual development :)
2) There’s a certain type of poster among the B&B, that Bill Burr might describe as “old guys who never got any with their jowls…wallowing out of their Mercury Tracer” that use their Dave Ramsey frugality as some kind of virtue signal. They do not understand the fundamental truth that the rich are different from you and I. They’re also the same people that tend to scoff when I tell them that I worked until 3:30 AM and went back to work at 9 AM.
Ahahahaha — yesss! Great reference. Bill Burr on Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’ve probably listened to that bit 500 times. I love how it just perfectly nails our collective sanctimony and hero-worship. People are complicated and nobody’s ever a saint, not even – wouldn’t you know it – the ones we insist on canonizing.
Okay, but can we assume this kid will go on to a career in the financial sector, and he’ll be one of the architects behind a respectably sized recession for his own gain by the time he’s 40, or is that too much of a microagression for you? If it makes you feel better, I’m sure he’ll work super hard for it, and won’t intend for it (just may not care about the consequences).
Not all of us were raised by someone who was willing to waste two grand to teach us a lesson.
Can you ask him to give me a few years to expatriate first before he pops one of the many bubbles floating around? Thanks in advance.
Based on the very limited information contained in the article, I have a feeling that a demanding career requiring long hours and a lot of mental horsepower is not in the cards for him.
Such an odd choice for a track car. Why not specialize? You may have dusted a Z06, but I’ll bet that guy was having more fun.
In a straight line. The C5 Z06 can probably still mix it up pretty good when the pavement gets all snake like.
Then buy the new M2. Its apparently quite good.
http://www.caradvice.com.au/419852/2016-bmw-m2-review/
My brother had a few thousand bit coins. IIRC he sold them when they were worth something like $5 each. While he pocketed a nice sum for what amounted to basically “nothing” (he had mined them on some spare computers), I don’t know how he lives with himself considering the number he sold were worth a few million at least at peak valuation. I honestly haven’t followed the bitcoin market so I don’t know what they’d be worth now but I’m sure its still several hundred thousand.
Interesting read. Can’t say I am not jealous of two M3s but even though this is a different level of wealth then I’m accustomed, and the initial investment was given to him, how can one look down on the chance he took on investing in the Bitcoin. How different would we feel if he worked at McDonald’s to save up the initial funds and then cashed out big time?
The odd part of the story for me was dad dictating what you were allowed to do with the requesting to leave it in MDM. I mean the guy is 19 and bought the cars with his own money.
Either way I would love to get behind the wheel on an m3 someday.
I dunno about you, but I would call him stupid if he used his Mickey D’s money to buy BTC, saw them expand to a value that could lift himself out of poverty forever*, and then decided to spend 40% on two rapidly depreciating cars.
This kid, I don’t really begrudge for blowing half his money at age 20. Hell, if I knew I would never be poor, I’d probably do the same.
*Forever, meaning the $578,000 invested in index funds would allow him to withdraw 4% of the value of the fund safely and in perpetuity as living expenses
I do love those wheels. Give whoever designed those a raise.
Talent and Luck. Both are necessary for success. My buddy, Rusty, worked hard, made Sgt in the Army, had a good job, then lost it all when his wife became ill. Conversely, years ago, I met a guy at a party in Santa Barbara: he inherited the family fortune, and spent his days shooting pool and drinking beer. Some of the One Percent are good folks, others are pricks like my dad: worth millions, he died with no friends, no family, and pissing on himself with dementia in a hospital.
“It was a tough ride with those Bitcoins, but I made it through.”
I’ll cut the kid some slack, a little bit, but knowing some folks who have lost children to illness, my definition of a tough ride is probably a bit tougher.
The hardest thing for a young person to gain is wisdom.
I know a 16 year old guitar prodigy named Brendon Linsley. You can check out his playing on YouTube. Musically wise well beyond his years and a fine young man besides. As good as he is, and he plays with Detroit’s best players and impresses them, I told him, “Someday somebody will break your heart and then you’ll know what the blues are all about, and that will make you an even better musician.”
Like Mr. Bromberg sang, “You’ve got to suffer if you want to sing the blues.”
Wow so many armchair psychologists, prognosticators and rich-person haters.
So what if the kid hit it big then blew it? Or may blow it. Or has a silver spoon and a golden parachute?
We all have our crosses to bear. You are the sum of your decisions. Live with it, or make better decisions.
Signed, a poor guy
FWIW ;
I don’t think spending $2,000 to teach your Son a lesson is ‘ wasted ‘ , not if he learns from it .
I have offered to send each of my Foster boys to Iron Horse Motocycle Training , not a one has taken me up on it yet , go figure .
-Nate