Antique & Classic Cars Blog
‘73 ‘02 still great in ‘08
Monday, June 30th, 2008At least one reader is a devout 2002 fan–a truly cool car–who hasn’t seen many on this site. So, when I saw this one a block from my house and camera, seemed like an appropriate moment to up ‘02 content.
Luckily the owner appeared so I got some background too. This belonged to a Hare Krishna–not a pairing I’d think of, but he kept good care of it. Current owner Kelly Shields bought it, threw on a supercharger to take horsepower to 200, but alas the back end was too light for that to matter much with near-standard width tires.
So out came the 6.9:1 pistons and in went 10:1s, if I recall correctly, for a useable 130 ponies, unsupercharged. Shields also redid the chassis, body, brakes, etc. to make it stop as well as it goes. I’m not the only one to like the car. He’s had people walk up and say, “I’d like to buy that car from you right now.” Nope. But he’s building a garage where he may start rebuilding them for others on a small scale. Sweet.
6 Responses to "‘73 ‘02 still great in ‘08"
Aw man. A very close friend of mine owned one of these back in the day. He was a co-worker, and we used to go for noon-time rides in it to pick up lunch. It was a GREAT car! Red.
Sweet! This car is how I remember the BMW brand being introduced to the U.S. market. Over the years BMW has positioned itself as the ultimate of course, but, back in the day, with these little 2002 models, the brand had more of a “cool” or uncommon quality. You just didn’t see a lot of BMWs back then. Wow, awesome car!
I knew a guy who had a TR6 and a 2002–a uniquely tasteful man. 
Odd coincidence–I photographed that car last night completely on a lark and today I see on the cover of the paper’s Variety section a later model 2002 in almost the identical shade. I didn’t bother lifting up the front end of the one pictured, as Will Smith is doing in the paper.
Now there is an awesome car!!!! Mine is a 1969 2002 in good condition, but not as nice as the one shown here. I purchased it on ebay a few years ago and flew to California to pick it up and drive it home. Was a great trip. Recently, a friend of mine completely rebuilt one and dropped in an S14 motor for plenty of zip.
Here is a link to a picture of my car I took on the drive to Minnesota. Still had California plates. This was in the early morning coming out of the mountains of Utah down to the plains of Wyoming.
http://www.bmw2002registry.com/imageHosting/images/cmparkhurst/2004_0420_075743AA.JPG
Cool shot, Cameron–looks like something out of the X-Files with the mist. What we can’t see for background keeps us focused on the car and what we do see to the left of the road (from our perspective) is spare and timeless–and placeless.
That’s one of my favorite color schemes too. That beige has a great classic feel to it–it’s close to my mother’s ‘74 Plymouth Satellite, which was a color called Sahara Beigh with brown interior.
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MotorMouth Kris Palmer, freelance auto writer and editor, blogs about vintage cars, the collectible auto scene and just about anything else that goes vroom.
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