Rationally Irrational

Car hoarding is a deeply personal and irrational hobby.  Semi-hot take: absolutely no single car is loved by every corner of the car community.  But that diversity is what makes cars so great.  The cars parked in my garage are the perfect blend of what I think are cool and what I can afford.  I love them all for different reasons.  But those reasons take an hour of explaining in order to sound like a rational human instead of a deranged lunatic.

Back when we worried about how Y2K would mess up our computers, a 5-speed BMW 325iX coupe slipped through my fingers.  It drove me bananas!  I lost out and I needed to find another one.  Despite my best efforts I just couldn’t find an elusive AWD e30 worth buying.  Most were sold in states where rust thrives, making a car that was rare 30 years ago even more rare today.  Then I got a call from a friend a few days before Christmas in 2012...

My journey in snatching up one of the rarest e30’s ever made could take up an entire post.  (I’ll get around to writing it one of these days, I promise.)  While it was exceptionally clean, one thing bothered me from the get go.  At some point in its life, a car phone had been installed and later removed when it became obsolete.  The un-installer left annoying screws and concealment caps on the side of the center console, tipping me and everyone else off about the car’s history.

Small screws and holes like this could easily be classified as patina, right?  Not in my deranged mind.  A new center console is a fairly common, inexpensive part to track down, right?  Yes, but I irrationally wished the car still had it’s obsolete and probably non-functioning phone.  Does that make me a hipster or a preservationist?  I’ll let you decide, but keep your answer to yourself, I’m emotionally fragile.

After a few years of mulling it over, another irrational vice of mine brought about an irrationally rational solution.  I’ve had a fascination with mechanical watches and clocks for nearly as long as I’ve been fascinated with cars.  Though it took quite a bit of homework to not pay Bring a Trailer prices, I was able to track down a 1970’s Heuer Monte Carlo dash timer.  A new in the box, UK Ministry of Defense surplus unit, freshly serviced by an expert. It was supposed to be installed on the dash of a Harrier, not a BMW, and that’s what makes it rationally cool.  Hot Rod-esque even.

Aside from a matte black case and UK Ministry of Defense markings, the civilian and military versions of the Monte Carlo are identical.  After winding the crown and pushing it down to start, the minute and seconds hands smoothly tick away, timing your journey to wherever the car takes you.  Hours that tick by are counted in a nifty window near 6 o’clock, and they jump as the minute hand approaches the finish line at 12 o’clock.  Old tritium paint, faded to a creamy hue, glows in the dark during late night drives.  A quick trip to the hardware store for some sheet metal, spray paint, and hardware was all it took to fashion a semi-professional looking mount that utilized the old phone mounting holes.

I need a dash timer in my old BMW as much a golfer needs a Z06 Corvette to get to the course.  Like a 670 horsepower V8, a 12 hour timer accurate to +/- 1 second is entertaining, but it can’t make time in traffic go any faster.  But both will make you want to go just a bit faster on an open road.

It’s a mashup of my love for analog greatness and semi-pointless self expression to fix an “annoying defect” in a car I spent close to 15 years trying to find.  Leaving the holes would have been easier, heck you can’t even see them from the driver seat.  A new center console would have certainly been cheaper, but it’s not as irrationally rational as my solution.  Hopefully you’re as irrationally rational as I am, because that’s what makes cars just so damn fun.  Let's keep it that way.