Well the clocks have gone back and the leaves are falling so I guess summer is officially over, that means the season of icy and slimy roads is upon us. With dry roads being the natural stomping ground of the BMW M Coupe and wet roads being one of the ingredients which led to the arboreal demise of my first M Coupe, winter definitely is not my favourite time of year. Luckily my Goodyear Eagle F1 GSD3’s are still proving to be grippy after six months so my unleaded right foot must be paying off. The tyres are genuinely lasting really well despite being a relatively soft compound and give excellent levels of grip in the wet and the dry. If they last the winter I’ll be well chuffed.

Due to finishing off my masters degree I haven’t been able to spend as much time in the Coupe as I’d have liked over the last few months but that’s something I’m hoping to put right in the near future. There were a few summer trips of note, with the best being the auto-journals get together where I was able to meet up with fellow auto-journalists. This gave me a chance to stretch the Coupe’s legs amongst some pretty tasty company and I’m glad to say that it held its own and even impressed some of the other writers.

Unfortunately, the next day the coupe had developed a pretty serious oil leak. When I inspected the oil splattered engine my worst fears were realised when I found the Vanos unit at the front of the bay covered in burnt-on oil.

The Vanos unit on M Coupes is actually a double Vanos unit and it’s a double-variable camshaft control unit, whatever one of them is. This little engineering miracle is what gives the M Coupe its performance but is also its Achilles’ heel, being notoriously delicate and expensive to replace, circa three grand for a new one. A recall early in the Coupe’s production run saw stronger bits fitted in the Vanos unit in an attempt to improve its durability. To BMW’s credit this appears to have worked as my Coupe’s still on its original Vanos though I know plenty of Coupes which are on their second or third. This was only an issue on Coupes made before 2001 as the later ones got the S54 engine rather than the S50 in my beast.

So my first port of call was my local BMW specialist who quickly identified that an O ring in the Vanos unit had let go not the Vanos unit itself. Phew, my wallet sighed a sigh of relief! However the good news stopped there as they didn’t have the necessary tools to take the Vanos unit apart so it was off to the main dealers courtesy of my friendly local flat bed truck. BMW then rather surprising diagnosed a leaky rocker cover gasket rather than the aforementioned Vanos issue. I asked them to double check the Vanos unit but they gave it a clean bill of health and fixed the rocker cover gasket.

A day later I was told the car was ready so I travelled down to Reading to find my Coupe all shiny and standing proudly right outside the dealership’s front door… in a pool of its own oil. This promptly restored my faith in independent BMW garages…

Whilst cursing my independent’s lack of tools I angrily strode into the dealership. I was met by a smiling service chap who promptly told me the car was ready and gave me the bill. After a few choice words I invited him to inspect his engineers’ work outside. On seeing the dealership’s newly installed car park oil lake he of course apologised and I asked to speak to the repairing engineer. Expecting a well known blind pianist to come strolling out of the workshop I was surprised when a smartly dressed, professional looking gentleman joined us. I was even more surprised when he stuck to his original diagnosis claiming that the gasket must have ripped. It was only when I wiped my finger under the Vanos unit resulting in a very oily finger did he begin to admit he might have been wrong. So I was dispatched in a Mini courtesy car and my leaky Coupe was wheeled back into the workshop.

Two days later I again had the pleasure of being invited back to Sunny Reading to pick up my hopefully fixed Coupe. I again came into the car park to see my car standing by the door this time minus the oil lake. However all was not well, the O ring had been replaced but with an old perished one as it was the only one they had in stock. Me and the engineer inspected the car and discovered a new trickle of oil, albeit a small one. To the credit of BMW they were equally as disappointed as I was with how the repair was progressing. So off I went again to have a Mini adventure through Berkshire and Oxfordshire’s B roads.

Three days passed and I was again asked to join BMW in Reading for afternoon tea and arguments. I was, by this time, sceptical that I’d be driving home in my Coupe but was secretly really enjoying driving the Mini Cooper with its go kart handling.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find an oil free and steam cleaned engine bay; throw in an agreeable bill and there were smiles all round. I bid goodbye to my little piece of the self preservation society and got behind the wheel of my Coupe. My first thoughts were, “is this thing really worth all the effort; I could trade it in for a Mini Coupe S Works and still have enough change for a pretty cool holiday”. But given that my second thoughts were, “God this things fast, stuff the holiday” the world was once more put to rights.

This little experience really is a good example of what it’s like owning an M Coupe. The problem is that with less than 550 of them on British roads they are rare things so garages know practically nothing about them. If you’re considering getting an M Coupe a good piece of advice is to find a specialist in your area that is capable of servicing them. BMW dealers aren’t bad but they do charge the earth and their engineers are more adept at diagnosing problems with a serial cable than a spanner so they’re left scratching their chins when the computers come up with a blank. Unfortunately the chap who always works on my Coupe at my local BMW specialist has now left to start a vineyard in New Zealand of all things. So I’m now in the daunting position of having to source a new repairing and maintenance garage. However this job is made easier by being a member of an owners’ forum. Z3MCoupe.com is the forum I belong to and I find it a surprisingly helpful source of technical information.

Well I’ve had the Coupe for a year and a half now and am still over the moon with the car. Yes, it drinks like Oliver Reed and most mechanics think it’s from Mars but for sheer driving pleasure and wow factor you have to spend an awful lot of money to better it.