Since my late teens, I’ve read sports car magazines and thought about what I’d like to have. While I was in my last year of college there were many articles about the new BMW 2002. I bought a new 1971 BMW 2002 shortly after I graduated from college.
I drove it without any changes until it needed new tires, but the new tires shook the entire car. The tire dealer re-balanced them, it still shook. Someone (maybe me, I don’t remember) suggested that we check the runout – it was 0.25 inches. So we checked the rim runout, it too was 0.25 inches. The car had always ridden smoothly, and I figured out what had happened: BMW cut the tires to overall roundness to make sure the car rode well. But either someone never noticed or didn’t care about the out-of-round wheels and the tire-rounding hid them from me until I bought the new tires. The car was out of warranty, and I wasn’t mad enough to fight with BMW about it. I bought new wheels, alloy instead of steel – I’d wanted them, as they were lighter and would reduce the unsprung weight, so I took this as an opportunity.
The car stayed unmodified until I finished my doctorate at Harvard Business School fifteen years later. During my last year there I thought about what I wanted to do with it; it was worn, of course. I decided to fix it up, but I needed to pay for doing so and I thought of a plan. I created 1040X’s for the last five years with two changes to my original tax filings.
- Deducted my doctoral education expenses; there were two tests for being able to do so:
- It must maintain or improve existing skills – I had been consulting before, during, and would do so after my doctorate
- It couldn’t suit me for a new business or profession – I found professors at MIT and other schools without a doctorate to prove this
- Deducted my race car as a business expense; the test was an expectation of profit:
- The IRS code didn’t say that the expectation was rational; my partner and I were so naive that we had actually discussed what to do with our profits
Because they were 1040X’s they were automatically audited, as I knew they would be. The race car deduction turned out to be the easy part; I had to appeal the educational deduction. The appellate level approved the educational deduction. I received several thousand dollars in refunds – enough for the car improvements as I did most of the work myself. These were:
- Blueprint the engine and transmission, replace the differential with a limited-slip
- Replace the driver’s seat, replace the front seat belts with racing harnesses
- Replace the gas tank with a racing fuel cell
- New wheels, tires, bearings, suspension bushings, and new shock absorbers
- Weld all body seams for chassis stiffness, repaint, and new windshield
When I finished the car looked like it just came from the showroom, but was faster and handled much better. It was just what I wanted. The only addition came a year later: a second gas tank in the trunk with a switch to control it – so I could drive between Albany and Washington DC without needing gas, as the 1979 oil crisis could have affected my frequent trips.
The extra gas tank came in handy for the Cumberford Martinique. On the day the prototype was finished, we wanted to drive it around the parking lot. But we had no gas and no can to put it in. So we used my (mounted higher) extra tank to siphon some down into the Martinique’s gas tank. This earned me one of the early opportunities to drive it sedately around the lot.
I have two notable memories of my BMW (it’s the only one I’ve owned). First, not long after buying it I was driving from Cleveland to Washington DC, as I did frequently. When I turned South from the Pennsylvania Turnpike I followed another BMW. He went faster and faster, and before long we were around 100 through the mountains. He was a quarter of a mile ahead of me, so I wasn’t concerned with radar – I’d never seen it in that section anyway – and the road was dry with little traffic. Finally, he turned off and I continued at a more sedate pace.
The second memory is of driving from RPI to Connecticut, to visit my friends, the Cumberfords. A student was riding with me, as I was passing near his home; he thought me strange when I insisted that he fasten all five points of his safety harness. It was night and we were driving down the Taconic State Parkway very fast, between 80 and 90 – and we hit a deer. Afterwards we were both OK, I checked the deer and it was dead. I had the car towed nearby and rented a car. I dropped my student at his home, and drove on to the Cumberfords. There, I noticed that the front of my shoulders were bruised from the shoulder straps. The next day I borrowed a truck and car trailer from them, loaded my rental car, drove to return the rental car, drove to my car and loaded it, drove to Mount Airy, MD, where a friend had a car repair shop. I left my BMW with him, borrowed a car from him and put it on the trailer, drove to the Cumberfords, dropped off the truck and trailer, and drove the borrowed car back to RPI. Later, when my friend had fixed the BMW, I drove down and swapped back.
I drove the rebuilt car for another ten years. Finally, when it got too tired I gave it to my friend in Mount Airy, MD, who turned it into a race car for SCCA. It’s replacement was a Dodge semi-GLH – without the turbo, but with all of the suspension modifications. It was a worthy replacement; a good-handling sleeper.
May 15, 2020
How well I remember this wonderful car. It seemed to fit the Fred I knew and loved so well that it seemed almost a trademark. That included the smell of gasoline and – one night at Taconic Lake – Fred having to drain its gas tank (partially) in the dark of night because some prankster had urinated into it. It seemed to me that the two were inseparable – and rightfully so.
An enjoyable read, especially the tax deductions and the endless vehicle swapping after you hit the deer.