The Ultimate Drive was truly a great experience!
In partnership with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, BMW organizes an annual event, The Ultimate DriveŽ, to raise money for breast cancer research and outreach programs. Choose a vehicle, take it for a drive, and we'll donate $1 per mile on your behalf to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, our partner in raising over $8 million for research in the past eight years.
We started out at Crown BMW with signing a waiver("if I steal it, you know where I live, if I wreck it, etc. etc."), and signing the BMW signature car. Then we had a choice of most any BMW they had to drive. We took the 330CI since that was closest to what I was comfortable with(that and there was a line for the 645)..
Some cars have very sensitive throttles, where a little press of the pedal puts you into 40mph and in the backseat of whoever you're in front of. Others take a gratuitous stomp, a court order, and a waiting period in order to get to 60.
Driving the 330Ci, you feel in control the entire time, rather than just hanging on. The acceleration is so smooth, you won't even notice passing 100 until you happen to look down at the spedometer. The engine has a deep throaty growl similar to some of those rice rockets. The brakes are fucking huge and I can easily do a u-turn on a two-lane without going wide in the turn. The steering and acceleration is very linear, putting the car exactly where you want it at how fast you want it to go, no more, no less.
Too bad the car couldn't read the directions better than we could. In our defense, no one told us that the miles were cumulative rather leg-distance. The course ran from wendover to 40W to 68N to Market St. to Norwalk back to wendover. Sounds easy if you see the signs and are not having so much fun blowing past old farts and trust fund babies.
We kept on 68N, well past our exit, into Oak Ridge. "Wait a sec, Oak Ridge is too small to have a Main St. let alone Market!" So I pull a U-ie right when Mike beeps in to ask how things are going.
"It's going great! We're lost and I'm loving it!" So we head back, only to realize that we missed the exit again coming back and have to drive two intersections past the I40 overpass to turn around again. This time we hit the exit and continue on the rest of the course. We came in with 27 miles on the odometer rather than the 13.3 we were supposed to have and no one said a damn word to us.
In case you haven't noticed, I love driving and I love driving these cars. It's a great experience for a great cause, although Tami was quick to point out that while we were "driving to cure one cancer, we're causing countless others with the carcinogens we're pumping in the air."
"Shh-Shh-Shh-Shh.... You're ruining the moment."