If I knew what I knew now, I'd still be driving my Explorer

"E90M3" (e90m3)
11/17/2018 at 09:19 • Filed to: None

No, not in lieu of my M3, but as my daily. My Explorer was my first car, and upon the acquisition of my M3, I decided to keep it. It was given to me when I got my license at 16 in June 2006.

I had driven it 9.5 years when I traded it in on my 128i. At the time, I was working in oil and was making good money and a 15k 128i wasn’t much of an extravagance; especially, given the fact that my M3 was paid for.

Sadly, when I lost my job 6 months after I bought my 128i, I sold it. The 128i never really did the roll I thought it would because my circumstances changed. The Explorer would have been better to just drive around San Antonio because it was paid for.

After 11 months of unemployment, and 8 months of only one BMW, I bought myself a manual 328i. While I really do like my E92, and it handled the role of driving 75 miles per day much better than the Explorer would have, the Explorer would have been cheaper. Now that my commute to work is only 10 minutes, I find myself wishing I had just kept the Explorer.

Hindsight is 20/20, and three years ago I had no idea I would be living in Greenville SC, let alone the fact that I wouldn’t be working in Texas after April 2016. All of this is a moot point, but life is always filled with those what ifs.

DISCUSSION (19)

DutchieDC2R > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 09:27

Ive been looking at 135i’s of that generation, coupe model (we get the hatchback here in Europe as well). Theyre still a bit out of my price range, but the 130i (also coupe model) is getting within reach.

However, and heres the big however, I dont know what it is with BMW’s, but I just dont see myself driving one. I know Im being way too judgemental, I also know the whole stigma is mostly made up in my mind and those cars (and BMW’s in general) can be great cars, but its this weird mental block that I have.

Also, that picture of you standing in front of the Explorer, awesome lol.

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 09:43

if i knew id be getting a much better paid job a couple months after i sold me panda... i wouldnt have sold it

*puts foot down shifts when ears bleed is only doing 30*

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 09:43

if i knew id be getting a much better paid job a couple months after i sold me panda... i wouldnt have sold it

*puts foot down shifts when ears bleed is only doing 30*

shop-teacher > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 09:53

If I knew what I kno w now, I would’ve kept my ‘98 S-10 I drove through most of college and grad school, instead of starting the merry-go-round of vehicles and wasted money that ended with my Sierra. It ended up ok, as the Sierra has provided many years of reliable paid-off service, but it would’ve been better to not saddle myself with a car payment at the beginning of my teaching career.

Captain of the Enterprise > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 09:56

You can’t change the past and it sounds like you made the best choice you could with the information you had at the time.

I-have-to-many-sports-cars-according-to-my-wife > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 09:57

If I knew what I know now, I would have bought a M iata instead of a MR2... I now have a Miata, but also a MR2 that has not run in 6+ years.

Tapas > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 09:57

If I knew what I know now, I don’t know what I would have done differently to about regrets later in life.

If you had kept the explorer, yo ur regret would be not pulling the trigger on a nice 128 when you had the chance, because it makes no sense to do that after losing your job.

WilliamsSW > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 10:02

You know what would be even cheaper than the Explorer? A Nissan Versa.

When I graduated college, I owned an ‘84 Topaz (don’t ask). I took a job with General Motors, making about $5k more than I thought possible for a new grad, so I felt ‘rich’.

Needless to say, I had the itch for a car. I ordered a brand new Sunbird Turbo convertible (to get a manual), and while I was waiting 3 months for it, I agreed to buy ‘72 Impala convertible, changed my mind, then bought a ‘64 Oldsmobile. So, 6 months in, I owned 3 cars and had a job that I absolutely hated. 6 months later, I quit, went back to grad school, and still owned those 3 cars (eventually sold the Merc and the Olds).

Mistakes were made...

Spanfeller is a twat > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 10:03

If I knew what I know now 5 years ago, I would’ve tried to move to Queretaro.

Or Santiago,Spain.... point being, better places to live than Mexico City. But I was obsessed with trying to go to college to the US or like Germany... I was very misguided

By 12th grade I stopped giving a crap.... but it was genuinely de-stabilizing seening the smartest people I knew being rejected from most US colleges they applied to, but spending hundreds of dollars on applications.

A friend of mine with a GPA of 3.7 and an SAT score of 1370 eventually got in to Columbia(after applying to ten or so) but her parents wouldn’t pay for it.

I had a direct pass to Tecnologico de Monterrey because of my SAT score, but I ended up going to Ibero and getting in on the first try.... so i got into two prestigious colleges and I’m a dumbass compared to the people who did make the extra effort to get to US colleges.

She’s moving to my college now after a semester at UNAM. She told me, point blank, “you say you’re impressed with mu grades, but aren’t we in the same place right now?”

How does this connect with cars? Well, in Spain I already have a car I like a lot, and here if I did live in Queretaro, it wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass to maintain, it’d consume less gas, and it wouldn’t be suffering on badly made streets.

PyramidHat > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 10:07

I’d have kept my 280 ZX with t tops...

E90M3 > WilliamsSW
11/17/2018 at 10:23

You know what would be even cheaper than the Explorer? A Nissan Versa.

I hate you.

E90M3 > Captain of the Enterprise
11/17/2018 at 10:25

Yeah, exactly that. I don’t regret what I did, it’s just one of those things that I was thinking about.

HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 10:28

A Versa Note would do the job better tho

HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 10:29

If we could turn back time we’d all go back to 2010 and thr ow a grand at Bitcoin.

WilliamsSW > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 10:40

Wow such hate for a car that Nissan must have spent years ( ok maybe minutes?) d eveloping and building.

Tristan > HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles
11/17/2018 at 10:56

...and we could buy whatever cars we wanted!

HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles > Tristan
11/17/2018 at 11:00

Exactly then I’d be e90m3 too.

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 13:32

I had a 01 Outback the I owned as my first adult car outta college in 2008. I sold it because I was moving out west and needed the cash. Had I kept it, I probably would have saved like $40k in future car purchases trying to chase the dragon. Though it’d have like 300k miles by now.

Longtime Lurker > E90M3
11/17/2018 at 15:18

I bought my BMW because I wanted something that handled better than my Caravan, had I known I would trade the Caravan in on the Ranger, that the Ranger drives just as fun as the BMW, and how much of a hassle owning two cars is, I wouldn’t have bought it.

When I picked the motorcycle I wanted (Kawasaki Super Sherpa) a used one came up for sale instead of going to buy it immediately I waited a day and it was already sold when I checked it out. I had to order a new one from the dealer, this hesitancy cost me $4000.

Late Fa ll of 2009 I found on Kijiji a 2008 Kawasak i Ninja 250R(New Redesign) for sale for $1000(Retail ~$5000) the only problem with it is the owner removed all the fairings, but were included in the sale. Even if I didn’t ride I could have put the fairings back on stored it for the winter then flipped it for profit. I didn’t buy it because I had just bought my Sherpa that summer, the Ninja was 300kms away, and I wasn’t sure if it would fit in the back of my Caravan. to this day I still haven’t seen a Ninja 250 the runs good go for so little money.