BMW Runflat Blues

Those of you residing in the Bay Area will doubtless have noticed just how bad the pot holes have been on the highways and byways of Silicon Valley this year. Not only are there more of them, but they have been deeper and more aggressive than ever, leading to an interesting phenomenon - the canny commuter. Those of us driving the same roads everyday soon learn where the really bad ones are and hence we'll steer round them. It's easy to spot the locals, therefore, because they are the ones weaving back and forth in their chosen lane, for all the world looking as though they are playing some weird version of Frogger. And just like Frogger, mistakes have consequences, especially when you venture outside of terra cognita.

A couple of weeks ago, we hit a huge pot hole somewhere between San Francisco and home, I think it was, with the kind of thump that has you crying out in sympathy for what the poor offside front wheel just went through. When stopped, I jumped out and took a quick look but didn't see anything immediately amiss. With a sigh of relief, we headed onwards ...

Fast forwards to Monday of this week and the Beemer was in the garage for a check up, mostly to see why it was low on coolant. Ultimately, no particular issue was found on that front but while waiting for the dealer to open I did notice a large bulge that had developed in the sidewall of the offside front. Hmm, don't like the look of that. I then went round to inspect the other front tyre and saw a weird wear pattern had developed on the outside shoulder. This wasn't going to be good, which in a garage translates into "that's not going to be cheap, sir".

Despite being runflats, and hence having stiffer sidewalls than normal tyres, that pot hole had nevertheless comprehensively broken that tyre and ruined the suspension alignment, thereby buggering its rubbery chum on the other side. You know where this is going, right? Low-profile runflats; German; dealer has your car up on jacks ....

4 new runflats (rears were anyway getting low after 26,000 miles), suspension alignment and taxes ran me $1,800. Gulp.

If you reckon on how many other drivers that hole must have caught out, it would probably be cheaper for us all to chip in for its repair, thereby saving California the problem of finding enough loose change down the back of CalTran's sofa in order to pay for patching it.

No wonder I cried out at the time - it was just a practice run for receiving the eventual bill. I guess I never was much good at video games, Frogger included.

Hello, John, Got A New Motor?

(With apologies to Alexe Sayle)

As BAR reminded me, I hadn't closed the loop on the new car thing.

Yes, we did end up replacing our 8 year old, 140k-miler Acura. After much deliberation on my part - some more unkind types might call it vacillation - I ended up with BMW 335i Coupe. I looked very hard at the Infiniti G37S and have to say I still think it's great value, especially as I hear tales of some people negotiating deals at close to invoice for what is essentially a brand new model that was only released this Fall. (I, it arrives in the UK next year according to evo, after they have rejigged the interior and suspension settings for picky Brits.) However, it's a bit boy-racer - especially as I'd have to go for the sports suspension - and once I figured out that if I kept this car as long as the last one I'll be 58 by the time I'm looking to trade it, then the BMW won out as the, err, sensible choice.

Sparkling Graphite - aka gray - with black interior and aluminium trim, an option that was hard to find (why they still build so many of these things with bits of wood nailed to the dash beats me.). Usual clutch of extras you have to take to get the couple of things you actually want and before you know it the price starts escalating dramatically. Bloody Germans.

Anyway, after several long hours in the dealer, combined with much getting up and packing to leave in order to move things along, we finally got an OK price on the car itself plus an acceptable trade-in value. Don't know if it really makes much difference but we elected to go in right before year-end and to only buy a vehicle they had in-situ. Could probably have squeezed a couple hundred more out of them but ultimately you just reach a point where the whole process is so damn tiresome it's just time to get it done, something the of course rely upon each and every time! Just as an aside, we did look at using Cars Direct again since that worked so well for the Tacoma pick-up but the price they were showing wasn't close to what we got by pressing the dealer first hand. Go figure.

Now all that remains is to wade through the 268 page users manual so I can figure out the intricacies of iDrive, Comfort Access, Hands-Free dialling and the Navigation System options. Hopefully, I can get all this stuff programmed-up without flattening the battery ....