Are we getting old or maybe not?
04/15/2020
So there it was: a BMW 320i Cabriolet from the E30 series, built in 1988. It had been 32 years since I had been able to buy a new car like this myself. It was my first six-cylinder, my first convertible as a new car. I drove the silver-grey car for two years, covered 37,975 km in it and then sold it on to a good friend.
Today, logically, I am 32 years older and slowly approaching retirement. My reflexes are probably not as quick as they were three decades ago, my hair is gray and I've probably lost some of my sportiness.
In comparison, the BMW 320i feels like a well-maintained used car (in Switzerland we call it an "Occasion"). It certainly doesn't look like a 32-year-old classic car to me. On the contrary. Some things are pleasantly progressive, such as the almost perfect all-round visibility and the clear bodywork, which only cars from back then offered. Or the easy-to-read dashboard, the easy-to-operate buttons, even the precisely shiftable five-speed gearbox. Today's cars can't do any better. The BMW has remained really young.
So if cars can still look so young at over 30 years of age, then perhaps we are not that old ourselves? As we all know, you are as old as you feel. And behind the wheel of the BMW 320i Cabriolet, I actually feel really young again ...
P.S. Incidentally, four years later I also owned the rival convertible from Audi, with the 2.3-liter five-cylinder engine. It was better in many ways, but I still remember the BMW more clearly.
