Coming from the BMW world... [Archive]

Elvis T

08-11-2014, 02:26 PM

I've always loved the mix of performance, style and comfort of a BMW and I still like them a lot. I grew up in a blue collar town, joined the Navy out of high school, worked in the oilfield and now work a desk job that I enjoy. Most of my life I was the odd person out liking foreign cars.

About a year and a half ago I saw a picture of a Firebird that I fell in love with. I searched to find information about what it was, and eventually found some good info on it.

I did more searching and I didn't realize, until about two weeks ago, what the pro pro-touring style was. It turns out, that's exactly the style of classic cars that I like. Once I did some google image searches, almost overnight I went from just enjoying the looks of classics to wanting to buy all of them. I then found this forum and it was like a gold mine for me!

It turns out it was garickman's (his username on this forum) rendering that I've fallen in love with and has drawn me away from my garage full of BMW cars to getting my first American car.

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Just this weekend I purchased a 1974 Camaro to start working on. I'm excited as hell and couldn't be happier!

Elvis T

08-18-2014, 02:26 PM

That's awesome! Welcome to pro touring. I found out almost the exact same way... looking at pictures on google for my Cutlass I'm working on. Cant wait to see a thread of your project!

I'm excited to get started on it. I kinda thought I was just going to dive in and be able to just start fixing and replacing things. Once I thought about one thing, I realized I wanted to do something else first and I immediately found out how much work I have ahead of me. I can honestly say that I got excited knowing that there was more work to be done than I first thought of.

I have a newer car that has sensors for all sorts of things and it seems the entire car's electronic system is integrated, so modifying or customizing anything tends to be a large project in itself. Most of the time, to do it right, it's just not worth it. Like if I want a newer navigation system, I lose control over some of my settings for hvac, lighting, and alarm. So being able to start and build it from the ground up really has me excited. There are a few electronic things that I've always wanted in a car, but for one reason or another I didn't feel like it was worth it, or I needed to daily drive the car. This car will be different.

I'm a hardware designer for home automation systems, so I get see a lot of very creative things that people with unreal amounts of money do. From that, I get inspiration to create my own projects. Some of the stuff, I don't know how functional it will really be, but I want to at least give it a try. I want to try things like a heads up display, capacitive touch buttons and sliders for hvac, heated/cooled seats and other similar modern features. It will probably be at least a year or two before I really get into things like that because right now I need to get the car to a point where it can be driven daily.....like a working hvac system, not having water leak through the sunroof, the windows and doors functioning properly and not sounding like a bag of metal.

Welcome!
The Pro-Touring style seems to be a well kept secret in many car circles but it is catching on.

Indeed it is, but it looks like it might be catching on...

Just starting out as well, what a great culture it is

I agree! One of the things I really appreciate in the threads that I have read is that people will find something that works or something they like and they'll use it. I may have my favorite cars, but I'm not naive enough to think that any one car is the best at everything. Things like using a BMW steering wheel and a Nissan 350z rear end. It's not so much a competition of one marque versus another, but figuring out a way to make things work in the best way possible and figuring out what each individual wants in their own car. Everyone has a unique vision of their ideal car, but a very similar way of going about it and it's great to see how much positive input and advice is given to each other on here.

I have a 1999 BMW 528iT (it's a 5 series wagon) and for a while I was throwing around the idea of swapping in an LS1 into it. I was inspired by a guy who has swapped an LSX into his wagon. As you can imagine, there were some BMW purists who were a little upset over it.

Here are the guy's thread about the swap:

Shorter version with more pictures:
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1924588-E39-touring-project

Longer Version:
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1904279-E39-touring-LS-swap-project/page46