BMW Ultimate Drive

This weekend, I went to the BMW Ultimate Drive event. On Saturday, I went to Sherman Oaks, and on Sunday, I went to Calabasas. BMW partnered up with the Susan G. Komen foundation to fight against breast cancer. For every mile I drive, they will donate $1 to the foundation. Not a bad deal! I get to drive (which I love doing) and also help out a great cause.

I drove pretty much every BMW that's currently sold. I loved driving through the twisty mountain roads of Mulholland Drive. I drove the Z4 roadster and 3.0 coupe, X5, X3, 328, 335i, 528, 535xi, 745, 650 coupe and convertible.

There was also some good food like sandwiches and other baked goodies.

The courses were pretty good. This was definitely the best driving event I've been to and plan on going again next near. The courses were about 11 to 14 miles long. That gave me enough time to really test out each car.

The Z4s were like race cars for the street. I would love to drive these cars everyday, if it weren't for the fact that it only seats two. Most of the time (about 90%) I drive alone, but sometimes, it helps to seat a few more people and haul more things. The Z4 coupe's growl was pretty loud. It sounded great. Z4s handle like go-karts compared to all the other ones. They're very agile and hug the road. I loved being able to carve the corners really fast. I liked the manumatic on it as well. You could shift with the levers on the steering wheel or use the shifter.

The 328 could well be the car that I purchase if I got a BMW. This is a real sports sedan. It handles really well and the seat fit me so well, it hugged me on the corners to keep me in place.

The 335 coupe was very fast. I won't say how fast I went on the freeways, but it could be enough to get this event canceled if people complained about seeing these cars fly through the roads. I noticed some disappointing turbo lag in the beginning, but once you get to the upper ranges of the tachometer, the engine really screams. The 2008 335 has nearly the same performance as the outgoing M3, so you could easily see why this car rocks. It has a V-6 twin turbo. I can only imagine how awesome the new M3 is going to be. I wonder how much faster and more powerful cars can get. I mean, seriously, we're complaining about oil and gas prices and people are concerned about the environment and yet car companies keep trying to outdo one another and themselves. The M5 has 500 horses. How much more horsepower will the next generations of M5s have?!

The 7 series was ultra-luxurious, but too big for my tastes. It's powerful, but the iDrive system confused a lot of people, including me in the beginning. It had too many toys that people had a hard time figuring out. I guess BMW had to justify the $90,000 price tag, so they included a ton of luxury features that I really don't need. It's fancy but unnecessary.

The 650 just rocks! The engine note sounds better than Pavarotti, god rest his soul. It's a deep throaty baritone. The 650 is like a really high end muscle car. A sweet ride if you can afford the $95,000+ price tag.