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I thought I'd do a quick shout out - backstory is I wanted shift paddles for the E61 and I managed to get my hands on a M-Sport steering wheel from an E60 but it was in rough shape. Before I spent any money on repairing the wheel I got the shift paddles working which was easier said than done (the factory wiring diagrams were wrong and I had to spend a fair bit of time reading up on the right way to go about it.) I'm a massive fan of the shift paddles and I'm really happy with them now they work! I don't drive the car in manual mode but I do like to shift gears now and then - e.g. going up or down a hill the transmission doesn't always drive the car the way I want it to. Anyway I struggled to find someone in the Wellington region that could do a steering wheel. I was initially looking for someone to re cover it as I thought it was too far gone, but I ended up reaching out to Erika @ The Leather Doctor https://www.myleatherdoctor.co.nz who said she could fix it up without re covering. I offered to remove the wheel from the car which made the job a lot easier for her. The Leather Doctor is a mobile service so they came to my house meaning I didn't have to faff around dropping the car off somewhere for the day etc. I'm really happy with the result, it looks a million times better now! Here's a before and after photo. Apologies in advance for the background, I took the photo on the front steps and in hindsight that wasn't a good spot, but you can still see the difference , it's night and day.

Stretched it’s legs over to the Wairarapa today. She really sings all the way to redline.

I was promised these back when I was a kid, mechanics need to up their game

Mechanic shops in 20 years are going to be very strange places. Look forward to any work needing an electric engineers cert.

“She’ll be right”, has never been uttered by a German. I don’t think people are as inclined to keep them around. Our inclination, mine at least, is nostalgic. The E30 is a good example, there were lots of them in the UK where I grew up. They were between sixteen and twenty-six years old when I was finishing school, more ‘old car’ than ‘classic car.’ They were well loved due to their BTCC pedigree and popularity on the nations roads, Frank Sytner had one, your grandad had one, and you wanted one. Well, you could have one and they didn’t cost an arm and a leg, they were fun to drive and you could fix them with a knife and fork on your dads driveway. That’s harder to do now so people aren’t getting the same experience, and it’s hard to get nostalgic about something you can’t remember because it didn’t happen.

Would be a good getaway vehicle in the 1920s haha

It is not just BMW, all ICE cars are getting more complex and fragile to meet ever tighter emission restrictions, so they won't last as long, meaning they need to be replaced sooner, thus saving the world ! But i suspect there is also more of an element of built in lifespan as well, it is in everything else we buy so why not cars....