Walking back toward Roseholme Cottage after lunch with friend Staghounds last weekend we were passed by this little gem tooling down 54th Street. I only had time to get off a quick hip-shot with the Fuji X-E1, wearing the XF 23mm f/2 WR lens. Not the ideal setup for car-spotting...
Most cameras I only shoot in RAW and process JPEGs in Photoshop, but the film emulation modes in Fuji cameras are so cool that they're the only ones I shoot in RAW + JPEG, despite the hit it causes in card capacity. The X-E1's film emulation is set to B&W with a yellow filter.
The shot below is processed from the RAW...
Classic BMW 2002, the ur sports sedan. When these first hit our shores, they caught the attention of sports car fans for having the nimble and tossable nature of a British two-seater, but with a usable trunk and a back seat and Teutonic build quality & reliability.
Car and Driver's love affair with the marque started with this model. Here's an excerpt from David E. Davis's epic '68 review:
Down at the club, Piggy Tremalion and Bucko Penoyer and all their twit friends buy shrieking little 2-seaters with rag tops and skinny wire wheels, unaware that somewhere, someday, some guy in a BMW 2002 is going to blow them off so bad that they'll henceforth leave every stoplight in second gear and never drive on a winding road again as long as they live.
In the suburbs, Biff Everykid and Kevin Acne and Marvin Sweatsock will press their fathers to buy HO Firebirds with tachometers mounted out near the horizon somewhere and enough power to light the city of Seattle, totally indifferent to the fact that they could fit more friends into a BMW in greater comfort and stop better and go around corners better and get about 29 times better gas mileage.
Mr. and Mrs. America will paste a "Support Your Local Police" sticker on the back bumper of their new T-Bird and run Old Glory up the radio antenna and never know that for about 2500 bucks less they could have gotten a car with more leg room, more head room, more luggage space, good brakes, decent tires, independent rear suspension, a glove box finished like the inside of an expensive overcoat and an ashtray that slides out like it was on the end of a butler's arm—not to mention a lot of other good stuff they didn't even know they could get on an automobile, like doors that fit and seats that don't make you tired when you sit in them.
Given the era, the sub-120bhp four banger, 11-second 0-60 time, and ~100mph top speed may seem somewhat low to generate the hype surrounding this car, but that's because our memories of "the Muscle Car Era" are distorted by time and magazine hype.
For every Hemi-powered Road Runner or SS454 Chevelle, there were literally thousands of sedans and "sporty" coupes being...well, let's charitably call it propelled...by wheezy 2-barrel small blocks and agricultural inline sixes. They put up horsepower numbers not much more impressive than the 2002, and weighed half again as much if not more.
Anyway, the Bimmer in the picture has the federally-mandated 5-MPH bumpers both front and rear, so a '74 model. It was about to be supplanted here in the U.S. by the first actual 3-series model on these shores, the (bigger, heavier) 320i.
.
