Amongst all the car art, super cars, vintage cars, etc., I need an actual car car, a daily driver as it may be (well...as close as my fleet is going to get):
BMW M3 (2005) (E46 series)
I've always loved the BMW M3s as basically the elite non-sportscar sportscar -- a car you can credibly drive around town to get the groceries (if its that important to you to show off to little old blue haired ladies at the grocery store...although who knows, maybe the checkout girl will be cute)), and yet which outperforms everything but the elite sportscars. Well that and I think their looks are an awesome blend of luxury car and muscle car. Ooh, and the quad pipes give off this delicious rumble. Ooh, and.... Oh. Er... Anyway...on two occasions I almost purchased one, but just could not justify the expense (price and insurance) given how little time (or need given Manhattan) I have for driving. On a test drive of one with a private owner he encouraged me to go ahead and try the zero to 100 speed test (not much encouraging needed). No professional driver am I, but I hit 60 in 2nd gear, and eased back at 95 while still in 3rd maybe 10 seconds into the test. There were 3 more gears to go. Its the kind of car that encourages you to do stupid stuff like taking freeway offramps at full speed without breaking to see if the car will stick (already know that answer from my own lesser bimmer
), wondering just where those other three gears kick in, and glancing repeatedly at the 180 on the speedometer wondering do I dare...? Now killing myself doing something idiotic in a car doesn't sound any more attractive to me in a post-apocalyptic future than it does now, in particular since there will be no emergency services to unwrap me from around that tree. But at least there will be nobody left around to chisel in "he was an idiot" on my gravestone. Liked both this (E46) and the last (E36 -- the one that started the market domination) better than the new E90s.
P.S. I would think this should stand for the whole E46 series of M3s (1999-2006) as they are virtually identical? I merely took the 2005 because there were a few extra tweaks and whistles added, and the electronics are a little better than they would have been in 2000, but its essentially the same car.