What It’s Like Loving A Car Most Enthusiasts Don’t Give A Damn About

I’m obsessed with BMW i3s. Obsessed.

Ever since buying the Cheapest One In America last year for $10,500 and putting about 10,000 miles on it, I cannot stop talking and thinking about i3s. I shop for them daily even though I already have one. I’ve joined every i3 owner’s forum, I’ve purchased the official BMW i: Visionary Mobility book, I stop by BMW dealerships just to look at their i3s, and I even bought a hideous BMW i3 T-shirt that my girlfriend isn’t the biggest fan of. And while I’ve been obsessed with many cars before, this time feels different, because there are very few people who get it like I do; most car enthusiasts have absolutely no interest in talking about i3s, and it feels weird.

As most of you know, I’ve been a car enthusiast for pretty much ever. I’ve owned everything from a 1948 Willys Jeep to a 1958 Jeep Forward Control to a 1965 Plymouth Valiant to multiple Grand Wagoneers to a 1966 Ford Mustang to Jeep Cherokees and five-speed Grand Cherokees and on and on. All of these are cars that traditional car enthusiasts love. Many have carburetors, all burn gasoline, their vintage design looks awesome, many are excellent off-road machines, and they’re fun to tinker on. Most people have some kind of connection to them or are interested in learning more, so they make for good conversation pieces.

The BMW i3, though, is different. It’s a relatively new, small, pug-nosed luxury compact car. Most people think it looks hideous, it only makes 170 horsepower, it’s doesn’t sound good, it has way less range than most EVs, it doesn’t handle that great, it isn’t easy to tinker on, and I could go on and on. The BMW i3 is, when viewed through the lens of many old-school car enthusiasts, not a car-enthusiast’s car.

Then how is that I, a diehard car enthusiast — someone so obsessed he studied engineering to develop cars in Detroit, then became a car journalist, then started a car enthusiast website — am so into this non-enthusiast car? I think the answer is a combination of two things: 1. You know how your friends who are the most diehard music fans tend to listen to music that normal people think sounds like garbage? Music that may be “technically” the best, but that is a bit odd to the masses? I think there’s some of that going on here. I think I’m in so deep that I see things in a way the average person doesn’t. And 2. What I’m seeing is just marvelous engineering: a carbon fiber body on an aluminum skateboard chassis; a rear electric motor coaxial with a little twin-cylinder scooter engine built in Taiwan; an insanely advanced and gorgeous interior made of sustainable materials; a crazy small turning radius thanks to skinny tires; ridiculously advanced interior features for a good price tag, and on and on. These aren’t things the traditional car enthusiast cares about.

I feel like I’m on an island. Nobody gets me! My old crew of friends whom I normally tell all about my cars — they don’t care about the i3. I don’t really care that they don’t care, since I don’t buy cars for anyone but myself, but this is a new feeling for me, and I now understand what my friend Nick feels when he talks ad nauseum about Pontiac Vibes (small cars that, like i3s, are just excellent at what they were designed to be). Here’s Nick at an event for members of the Genvibe Pontiac Vibe club:

To be sure, like Genvibe, there are plenty of BMW i3 owner’s forums, Facebook pages, and other support groups for the afflicted, but it’s not the same owning a car that isn’t something a traditional enthusiast would be interested in. I was recently on the phone with a BMW dealer inquiring about an i3. I made small talk; he told me he owned an E92 M3, I told him I owned a bunch of classic cars. “So, you’re a car enthusiast and an i3 fan, eh?”

What the … ? I’d heard similar things before when I talked about the i3. I guess people figure: How can a little compact car with little power, no manual transmission, no sound, and polarizing styling possibly be an enthusiast’s car? Isn’t this the same as liking a Toyota Prius?

I think it’s very different. I think the BMW i3 is the modern Citroen DS.

Watch that video above, and you’ll see YouTuber “Classics World” explaining why the Citroen DS is “The Greatest Car Ever Made.” Sure there’s some discussion about styling, and perhaps the DS has the i3 beat in that regard on the exterior (the i3’s interior, though, is a masterpiece), but design isn’t the DS’s biggest strength — it’s the car’s technology. You’ll see in the video that, what makes the car so impressive more than anything is its advanced tech — its unibody design and its self-leveling hydropneumatic suspension, which is part of a hydraulic system that powers all sorts of subsystems including power steering, brakes, turning headlamps, and on and on.

The DS was an engineering marvel when it arrived on the scene in 1955, just as the i3 was when it joined the party in 2013. It’s the little Bavarian compact’s carbon fiber body, it’s the rear scooter engine tucked right up against the electric motor, it’s the eucalyptus wood interior, it’s the door panels made of Kenaf fibers, it’s the absurdly skinny wheels — the i3 was, as engineering expert Sandy Munro put it when the i3 came out, “The Model T of our time.” It may lack some of the DS’s elegance on the outside, but look inside and under the skin, and what you see is pure magnificence.

But that’s not what most car enthusiasts care about, so for the first time I find myself obsessed with a car that is largely unloved. Folks, when asking me which cars I own, will show interest in all the old cars and then, when I mention the i3, will think it doesn’t fit in. But that’s fine.

But just because no one likes the music I like doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it. It’s just a bit different going from rocking out with your friends to quietly listening to your tunes all alone with your headphones on.