Even after 22 years, this BMW M5 is still my favourite - Driving
’ So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. So said Milan Kundera, author of Ignorance (and The Unbearable Lightness of Being ), about two middle-aged former lovers looking to rekindle a romance out of “memories that no longer match. ” But, as anyone who has actually returned to his or her past can attest, what we think we remember and what we actually face are often testament to the fragility of reminiscence. Little wonder, then, that Kirk Cavell’s extremely gracious offer to let me drive his dad’s 1993 BMW M5 — the very car I have worshipped most lo these last 20 years — was filled with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. Would this be Kundera’s “present conquered and captured and carried off by the past” or would I, face to face with the reality of 22 years of internal combustion progress, realize my revered M5 for just the bucket of bolts all sports cars become... Indeed, Cavell’s aged hot rod did seem somehow smaller, more cramped than I remembered, not necessarily a bad thing considering the corpulence of the current M5, but startling nonetheless in how quickly my memory is revealed to be deceitful. Indeed, the whole dashboard looked like something out of the Starship Enterprise, the past’s vision of what the future might look like. Read more: Here’s why BMW’s i8 is the new ‘it’ car. Then I started the engine and, instantly, I realized that, contrary to Ignorance ’s most oft-quoted passage, it is possible “to re-experience a love the way. Source: driving.ca
