[OldToby]

Yesterday for the first time I drove an E39 M5. It was for sale at a local car dealer; I had been thinking about replacing my venerable 1989 325ix with something a little newer and a little faster, so I swung by at lunchtime and took the black-on-black 2003 M car for a little spin. I drove it for a while on city streets, then took an onramp to I-90 to see how it comported itself on the freeway.

To make a long story short, the 15-minute drive was an automotive epiphany. I’ve been a car guy since I first read Stanford’s The Red Car back in the 70’s. I started at age 16 with a ’69 MGB, then worked my way over the years through a variety of interesting cars: MGBs (never newer than my ’69), MGCs, Porsche 911s, an MGA, a Series 1½ Jaguar E-type, an Audi, a mid-60’s Jag saloon, a couple of 1979 528s. These cars were interspersed with vehicles I’m now ashamed to have been associated with: a Ford Festiva, a couple of Volkswagen squarebacks, an MG 1100 (it sounded like a good idea at the time). Driving the M5 elicited a visceral response I’ve never before had to a car. When I blasted down the onramp and shot onto the freeway, I understood that “jaw-dropping” isn’t just a figure of speech. My jaw dropped, literally. Then I laughed maniacally, like a kid on his first roller-coaster ride. At about the time I was merging onto I-90, I decided that I had to own an E39 M5. Not that I wanted to buy one. I needed to buy one. I need this car the way I need oxygen or water or Adams peanut butter.

Here’s my problem. When I told my wife (not a car person at all) about my revelation, she tried to be understanding. She tried to understand. She asked me why I HAD to own this car. I tried to explain it to her in terms she could relate to, but I found that my powers of expression were not developed to the point that I could explain to her the wonder of this vehicle. I even trotted out Plato’s old chestnut about the shadows on the cave wall. The M5 is not the shadows. It’s not even the object that’s making the shadows dancing on the wall. The M5 is the fire that creates the shadows.

I need the assistance of forum members to help me come up with some way to explain this vehicle to her, to figure out a way of explaining my need for the car to someone who was okay with the VWs and the Audi, who was even content to drive around in a Ford Festiva, for crying out loud. I need to justify a $25,000 expenditure on an almost-ten-year-old car. But what a car.

Any help would be gratefully received.