Where to start? I guess at the beginning of this ‘Odyssey’ last Summer, the week before the Monterey Historics Week, our august and venerable Club Executive Vice President, Eddy Funahashi called me to ask if I would be interested in lending my 1974 2002 Turbo to BMW for an upcoming media event. He mentioned that there would be some people from BMW Group, Munich who were coming to Monterey for the Festorics and would want to see the car and discuss the possibilities. The best time and place to do this seemed to coalesce around the Legends of the Autobahn…

Because of the late hour, parking lot tickets were no longer available. Eddy’s thought was to show the car in the original 2002 class as there was an opening. Having done nothing to prep the car at this point and it was the Tuesday, panic mode set in. As one can imagine I have commitments to several other Historic Week events, so  I really didn’t have any time to do anything before Friday of the event.

My turbo was used by BMW to be apart of the M2 launch at the Detroit Auto Show in January and the Press Familiarization sessions at Laguna Seca Raceway in February. It was a hoot all around. Here is the launch video

This is a golden moment. I was a guest of BMW for this event and it was a wow! experience.

This is what the floor looked like after the Press Conference launching the X4M401 and the M2. There were more people most of the day checking out my turbo than the M2…

And then just before the Press Familiarization at Laguna Seca there was a whole day doing laps in formation behind a camera car for video and still frame shots. Here is the composite video:

The following is a typical still frame shot among several hundred that were taken:

BMW constructed a 60×40 temporary building for lunch and work between sessions. They filled it with these guys:

At the lunch breaks the BMW Group M Brand PR guy, BenjaminTitz made sure I had great companions like Bill Aberlin, Tomo Glock, Augusto Farfus, Antonio da Costa and Martin Tomczyk. The last four were taking a break from their DTM Teams’ preseason testing  at Catalonia.

I also interviewed with numerous magazine reporters from the likes of Auto Bild and Auto Week among others about the turbo. On the second press day our venerable Roundel Editor, Satch Carlson, shows his best:

–grb