Have to confirm that most BMW (Black Man's Wheels) are in fact complete sh1te! In fact I will expand that to include a vast majority of Nazi automobilia! Having owned, de-flowered, dis-assembled, re-assembled, driven to the edge, broken, destroyed, tinkered with, breathed upon and ultimately trashed pretty much all the older race bred machinery out there from every continent, I can confirm there is but one contender today for the title of 'Most fun you can have with your clothes on for not much more than a cup of sake in Tokyo' and that is the Subaru Imprezza Turbo! the last decent Bavarian output was the 2002 (model, not year!) and there has been nothing falling out of the Mercedes workshop worth a light since the D3 sports prototype, and that was never a road car anyway! Audi still make the incredible Quattro Quattro in limited, order only, numbers in a corner of their workshop and these are totally hand built items because the discerning owners are willing to pay a wheelbarrow full of Euros to have the best they ever produced. Everything since then is pants. VW haven't churned out anything worth sitting in since the Kubelwagen and if you have ever had the misfortune to strip down an old Beetle, you will know why Hitler got as powerful as he did!
In the UK, you can pick up a 10 year old Imprezza, sometimes even the officially upgraded Prodrive versions, for less than the price of a new Nissan Tiida. This is a 2 litre, flat 4, turbo charged rocket ship with 4 wheel drive and is stickier than flypaper on the road. 0-100 in under 5 seconds. Looks mean, drives keen.
You want to go hillclimbing? Buy a Caterham. Better still, buy a Brabham!
Sitting in his X wing listening to the bleeps and bloops from R2...
Knight