[Rick Lee]

I've been to a few events at BMW's DC office where they have designers come in and talk about how they do stuff. They used to have a shop in Newbury Park, CA that sent over clay models to Germany and they'd bounce ideas back and forth. The CA guys had a real sense of humor and would paint beach and palm tree murals on the insides of the crates for the Germans to see when they uncrated the clay models - ha ha. One guy, I believe named Greg Brewer, was a Z3 designer. I met him just after the car appeared in that James Bond movie. Greg was standing at an easel with a Sharpie in one hand and drew a Z3 in less than one minute that looked like a photograph. I was blown away. I also got to see a lot of stuff they built but never put into production, like the dune buggy and some motorcycle stuff. Bob's BMW, the local motorcycle place, has one of the bikes with the roll cage that doesn't require a helmet. It was never approved in the US, but I've seen them in Europe. And I recently saw a Z1 in my parking garage, which was their precursor to the Z3, but only sold in Europe. They have a lot of turbo diesel models in Europe too, but I don't think any in the US.