I’ve had my M Coupe for nearly two years now and have covered close to 20,000 miles with no major problems [well, if you ignore the Vanos “oil lake incident” in entry 3- ed] and the car still feels tight and responsive. Plus an unleaded right foot has ensured that the tyres bought last spring are still in good nick, ready for a Summer of B road hooning (hoon - verb: To drive with enthusiasm and reckless abandon, whilst avoiding trees).

So things are going well and I’m really appreciating the two sides to the car; luxury cruiser and bonkers sports monster. A couple of months back I had to do a number of long journeys up and down the country covering London (the Ace Cafe), Bristol and north Yorkshire. The Coupe made these an absolute pleasure and really ate up the miles, proving itself as an exemplary long distance cruiser, especially with the added cruise control.

Simply chuck a collection of driving music CD’s into the changer and let Messrs Harman and Kardon recite them back to you with impressive clarity, watching the longest and dullest motorways simply fly by with hardly any effort at all.

Whilst circumnavigating the British motorway system I started playing a new game which was seeing how far I can get a tank of petrol, and one afternoon I found myself filling up after covering a remarkable, well remarkable for the coupe anyway, 250 miles giving an average of about 24 mpg. I normally get about 190 miles out of a tank, so finding an extra 60 really surprised me and made me think that this actually is a practical car, well maybe...

This figure could have been partly due to me swapping petrol from Tesco 99 Ron to the new(ish) Shell V-Power 99Ron rocket fuel. I’m completely unqualified to say why changing petrol to one of equal Ron made a difference but the car definitely seems a bit more up for it on its V-Power diet.

At the top of this journal entry I stated that I’d had no major problems with the Coupe, which is true, but I did have a bit of an issue a few weeks back when one of my brake callipers seized on a journey. This resulted in a very slow and juddery drive and one red hot, glowing brake pad. Had I been sensible and pulled over to the side of the road then summoned my friendly breakdown chap this wouldn’t have been so bad. However I limped it home and in the process cooked the brake pad, scored the disk and generally made a right pig’s ear of it. So £720 later I had one new brake calliper, a new set of pads and some shiny new disks too. I asked to keep the calliper as I’m a bit of mechanical geek and wanted to see what had failed, when I saw the failed item I was surprised to find it was only a single pot model.

I thought it would be at least a twin pot given the sporty nature of the bread van. All those stories of BMW’s cooking their brakes at track days now made a bit more sense. So after two years’ motoring with only one minor problem (not counting trees, see journal entry#1) the coupe has now covered 70K miles and is maintaining its reputation of a mad sports machine than can handle the daily grind. I doubt the TVR Chimera or Maserati 3200 I looked at before getting the coupe would have been quite so reliable or robust.

In the next entry: the Coupe meets Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear boys...