It’s time to close the chapter on our 2000 BMW M Roadster, our first attempt at owning a near-exotic car. We bought it in early 2008, and sold it last month, barely driving it for 7,000 km in more than three years. Here’s a rundown of what you need to know if you plan to buy a premium sports car on a budget.
You might be wondering why there have been no updates on our 2000 BMW M Roadster, the ultra-rare sports car of which only a handful exist in the UAE. The truth is we haven’t been driving it much, because it is a race-car for the streets. Race-cars aren’t particularly good on crowded streets.
We’ve had in our possession a 2000 BMW Z3 M Roadster since the beginning of 2008. It is as close as limited-income people like us can get to owning an exotic car without selling off kidneys and limbs. But in the past decade, the Z3 was replaced by the Z4, and then came a second-generation Z4 in 2009. So for a few days in 2010, we had in our possession a BMW Z4 sDrive30i. Ironically, the new mid-range Z4 now costs as much as the M Roadster used to cost a decade ago. So is a regular Z4 really at the same level as an M-tuned Z3 of the past?
Before anyone gets too excited, this is not a full-blown comparison test. Getting the Nissan GT-R for a test drive was a good excuse as any to assemble a few other sports cars and a photographer. We’ve had our 2000 BMW M Roadster for more than a year, the 2009 Nissan GT-R tester was with us for only a few days, and our friend’s 2009 Ferrari F430 Spider was still being broken in so we couldn’t push it. But we did get a feel for three different approaches to speed.
Our BMW M Roadster soldiers on, having spent more than one year with us, racking up only 3000 km since we bought it at the beginning of 2008. Driving a hardcore-tuned sports car in daily traffic isn’t easy, so we fell back on our other automatic cars for city driving. Even then, costs came up during the year, some involving expected repairs, some just general maintenance, and some because BMWs have the durability of ice cream in the desert.
Yep, after an extensive search for a used rocket, our new benchmark sports car is a 2000 BMW M Roadster. In buying it, we broke all the sensible rules of buying a used car and took the plunge into high-maintenance exotic car ownership. With 321 hp calling, who can resist?