It had been a good few months. You hadn’t been on Facebook Marketplace at all. You hadn’t looked up any old brochures. Then this BMW rally car showed up, flying sideways and skipping across the ground like a stone and, dammit, you want an E30 again.

This is from the , which is a high-speed parade of the greatest cars from Group B rally, Pikes Peak when it still had dirt, and all sorts of other amazing, top-rung vehicles of rally history.

The other week I happened to be at the Nürburgring (probably the only time I’ll ever get to “happen

If you went, as I did, you went to see Audi Quattros and Peugeot 205 T16s and Metro 6R4s, or Alpines and Porsches and Celicas if you were into the older stuff.

It was only a few years ago that I started actually spectating, volunteering at, then competing in…

But for some reason it’s Marcel Baldauf and Walter Münch in their black and red E30 that stand out. Skip ahead to 0:49 in the following video to see what I mean:

It’s a car anyone could put together, a very straightforward two-door BMW, the kind of which is still easy to find and buy and build just about anywhere in the country. And look at how it’s driven.

Ugh. I was just done convincing myself that I didn’t need one of these things.

(Hat tip to Dan!)