Yes, it’s a BMW club, but they also welcome pretty much anything with four wheels to come race with them. There was everything from old BMW 2002’s, to modern tuner cars like the Subaru WRX and Ford Focus ST, to Corvettes, to Porsche 911 GT3 RS’s, and more. If you want to race it, you register for the event, and it passes tech, you are in. They even let our Jeep XJ-R and our rusty, caged, and gutted Datsun 280Z LeMons car race on a regular basis, and they haven’t banned us yet!

My chariot/office/beater for the day was this 2010 BMW 135i, owned by Greg Stewart. He’s no stranger to Bangshift, and he generously offered this novice racer to beat the crap out of his expensive twin turbocharged daily driver for the entire day. Whether you like the Germans’ interpretation of performance, there was a lot to like about this car. It’s surprisingly devoid of all the distractions of navigation, touch screens, and other convoluted technology, and it felt right at home on the track. And with traction control off, it was extremely easy to steer with the rear once boost kicked in.

The club races at Fort Devens, which is a closed US Army fort in Ayer, MA. The Massachusetts State Police, as well as the Army Reserves, use the site as well. The base itself was used by active duty military until 1996. The BMWCCA uses the base’s old airport runways to set up their autocross course. It’s a decent sized area to race on. We are lucky to have such a facility nearby.

Like I said before, there are all sorts of non-BMW machines that show up to race. This highly modded Lotus 7 replica had some sort of supercharged mill under the hood. While running around between working the course, racing, and doing ride-alongs, I missed the owner. Whatever was powering it made it very fast on the track.

Hey, look: an Omni GLH Turbo! This one is owned by Patrick Murphy, one of the buddies I mentioned earlier that has been prodding me to join my friends at these events. These originally came with the Turbo I non-intercooled 2.2 Chrysler engines that made around 146hp, but this one has been brought up to the intercooled Turbo II specs, and then some. If you have never driven or been in one of these, they should be on your list to experience one. They are a lot of fun. It was great to watch it dance around the cones, and it held its own against much more modern cars like a VW GTI and a Ford Focus ST.

What would a BMW club be without M3’s racing all over the place? There were M3’s of all generations in attendance, save for the current generation cars. The first generation E30-based cars are starting to end up in collections and a lot are being pampered and not driven, so it was nice to see one getting used for what it was built to do.

Is that seriously an electric supercharger? Yep, that’s an electric supercharger. Ripped from those ads in the back of Car Craft Magazine circa 2003, this one was mounted to a Scion FR-S. No word on whether it actually did anything, but there were a ton of Subaru BRZ’s and Scion FR-S’s at this event, and they all posted respectable times, even this one. They may not be the fastest thing on the dragstrip, but they were great on track. In fact, a lot of cars that get overlooked on the street or dragstrip, like the MX5 Miata and the late model Nissan Z cars, were right at home in the sea of cones.

Do you remember the first time you rolled up to the line before the lights tripped or, in this case, the guy at the line waved you on? This is that exact moment. The club urged all novice drivers (like me) to bring along an experienced instructor from their pool of seasoned drivers along for the first four of the eight runs you get in the day. I’ll be honest; the fact that I was in my buddy’s car and the presence of the instructor made me nervous. But once I got through my first run, I felt a lot better. My first run: a DNF taking 108 seconds. I missed a gate completely.

During the day, things got better. The stupidly simple things, like how to hold the steering wheel, when to brake, and NOT to use the clutch all the time, did wonders for my times. The club splits your runs into morning and afternoon sessions, and I went from a 108 second run with a DNF to a clean 91.738 second run over four runs. Now, the main pack was battling it out in the mid-70’s, but I felt pretty damn good.

In the afternoon, I was sent out on my own for the first time. For some reason, it just all clicked. Everything the instructors and my friends were telling me finally started to make sense, and I clicked off an 87.977 second run. Again, far off from the majority of the pack, but a huge improvement from what I was doing in the morning! Greg, the car owner, ended up hopping in the car in the afternoon to ride along and see what I was doing to his poor car for the last few runs.

At the end of the day, my best time was my last run of the afternoon: an 84.293 second run. While it was 10 seconds from competing with the rest of the pack, it surpassed my goals. After the first 108-second run, I thought I would be happy with something below 100 seconds. Then, the times got better and better as the day goes on. Eventually, when I get better at this, I know I won’t be improving in large chunks like I was this time, but I’ll take it!