How much you can do with less

Aslaner’s car has lost little of its as-new performance when I drive it in the hills above Hayward. On the twisting two-lane that snakes north toward Berkeley, the superb-handling little speedster is as joyful as ever.

It might have lost some of its 134 top horses, but the M42 four-cylinder engine has stood the test of time quite well. It needs little encouragement to accelerate into the legendary 6,000-rpm range, and it puts a wide smile on my face when I wheel the car around some of the tighter corners. It only goes to show how much you can do with less.

As I downshift and brake before one of Redwood Road’s more poisonous downhill turns, I mention to Kivanc that I would dearly love to put some of Munich’s engineers and developers into this car, if only to remind them of how BMW earned its reputation with great driving machines like this one back in the day.

Over the engine noise, I hear Aslaner swallowing hard, and I sense that he’s holding his breath and not listening to me. I slow down a little—or rather a lot, because I’ve gotta test the brakes, you know—and think about how these 1.8-liter BMW fours were never very torquey, doing everything with revs and high compression (10.0:1 back in 1991). Trundling along in fourth gear, this 19-year-old car is extremely relaxed, and Aslaner can finally exhale. Swapping seats for the ride back to Hayward, he glows when he gets behind the wheel again.

“When I was a kid in Istanbul, I always dreamed of having my own BMW, but I couldn’t afford one,” he recalls.

Now he can, and he drives his Brilliant Red baby with real affection.

“People say that the four cylinders are underpowered, but I think it’s more than enough,” he says. “I love this car.”

It is amazing what you can get for so little money nowadays.