**The Joy of Driving and Tuning a Classic BMW**

When it comes to driving and tuning classic cars, few models evoke as much passion and excitement as the BMW 2002. For many car enthusiasts, the 2002 is more than just a vehicle - it's an experience, a thrill, and a connection to the past.

One of the key things that sets the 2002 apart from other cars is its handling and performance. As Jay notes, "You know, one thing about the cops if you're by yourself, they'll cut you a break if it's two guys dicing, but if it's just you, you're screwed." This highlights the importance of having a driving partner when behind the wheel of a sports car like the 2002. But even solo, the 2002 is a blast to drive - "I kind of like to drive my own car and just enjoy the vehicle," says Jay. With its responsive handling and precise steering, the 2002 is a joy to navigate twisty roads or simply cruise around town.

Of course, no classic car is complete without some modifications and tweaks to optimize its performance. For Jay's 2002, he's been experimenting with different fuel types - "You know, if you run regular premium fuel, it's fine," but once the engine hits 305 or 328 horsepower, "you gotta start running the 100 octane." This may require some careful adjustments to prevent lifter chatter, but the end result is well worth it.

Another aspect of driving a classic car like the 2002 is the thrill of racing oneself. Jay notes that when he's out on the road, he often finds himself competing against his own personal best times. "I'm just racing myself," he says with a smile. This competitive spirit is part of what makes driving a classic car so enjoyable - it's not just about getting from point A to point B, but about experiencing the thrill of speed and performance.

As Jay continues to work on his 2002, one thing that stands out is its attention to detail. "There are a few things left to do," he notes, but overall, he's happy with how the car has turned out. For enthusiasts like Jay, there's no greater joy than seeing a project come together and knowing that they've put their own unique touch on it.

Of course, one of the most iconic features of any classic BMW is its air conditioning unit - or lack thereof. In the 2002, the original AC system was not equipped with a dynamat (a device designed to absorb heat), which meant that drivers often found themselves sweating bullets in even mild temperatures. However, when Jay installs his new vintage air unit, he finds that it solves this problem in style. "It's amazing," he notes - once installed, the car is cooled to perfection, and the driver can enjoy a comfortable ride even on the hottest days.

For many classic car enthusiasts, owning a BMW like the 2002 is about more than just driving the car itself - it's about connecting with the past and understanding the history behind this iconic model. When Jay brings his 2002 out of storage for the first time in years, he notes that he's never felt such a strong connection to the car before. "This is my childhood," he says, smiling wistfully.

Throughout its production run, the BMW 2002 was praised for its clean design, modernity, and overall performance. Jay agrees - "Clean design still looks modern, plenty of headroom, maybe a leg room... it's a car if you're a young guy with a family, you can have a sports sedan even today." This versatility has made the 2002 a beloved model among classic car enthusiasts.

As Jay drives his 2002 off into the sunset, he reflects on his experiences and the joy that this car has brought him. Whether he's cruising around town or racing down the track, the 2002 is always a thrill - and one that he never gets tired of.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's a lot of fun to drive yeah right the cam really starts to come on at 45 to 65 you really feel it right you run over a dime but you can tell it was head or tail i believe that one episode of jay leno's garage the car we're featuring today 1973 bmw 2002. i have a soft spot for these because when i was in college i worked at a place called foreign motors in boston and we sold bmw peugeot mercedes-benz rolls-royce bentley anything foreign because it sounds funny now but those were foreign cars and the bmw was just starting to hit its stride the 1600 had come out it was a huge hit and then the 2002 and the tii this is what i call part of our street grab series sometimes when i'm out driving around i see a car like i furiously flag down the owner and say i love your car tell me about it you want to be on the show and i was at the auto books which is a bookstore in burbank where people congregate on the weekends and i saw it parked there as you can see it stands out if you're a cop you're not going to miss this if it's going 66 and a 65 you're probably going to get a ticket because it's just you see it coming the owner's name is dorian hicklin and he's done the restoration on this he's knowledgeable about the car so let's find out about it dorian come on in how you doing jay good to see you my friend good to see you yeah i saw him at the bookstore and i said hey let's do this and he said sure so i appreciate that so what did you start with was it a project car was it a completely stock car you modified tell us about it this was actually a car that a friend of mine had owned up in the bay area and he had it for many years and kind of sat outside went inside outside and i always really was fond of the car and wanted to do a cafe kind of b sedan back date build right and with this car we negotiated a deal after many years and finally i went and picked it up it was kind of in a sad worn state so this had a full frame off rotisserie restoration now stock it was a four cylinder with a two liter two liter correct two liter and i think the stock horsepower was 125 something like that the tii was 125 but the stock was probably around 95 to 100 horsepower i know it sounds almost funny now it's so little it's like motorcycles right but this was considered so fast and so good handling back in the day correct i mean especially in new england people love them every vermont english litter professor smoked a pipe and drove either or one of these because it just had a cool factor because there really were no sporty small sedans that could hold four people you got a falcon or a comet or a valiant or something or volkswagen which really wasn't that either this was really one of the fiat maybe but this had the german quality and the german build and were just fantastic to drive by 73 is probably a five speed correct yeah five speed actually was kind of an option but most of them were four speeds so this actually has a five-speed from a 320 bmw oh okay and also a 390 limited diff as well from a 320. okay now obviously with the exception of taking the bumpers off and some of the trim you haven't modified the body a whole lot but imagine everything else is pretty much correct yeah there's been a lot of little uh nonces and touches that we've added to this from the interior to suspension and a lot of things that may has not been done in a lot of these bmw 2002s i think well can we open the hood let's absolutely pull the pin here yeah sometimes you gotta press down a little bit there you go ah very pretty beautifully done nicely detailed i'm always amazed at the size of alternators from this period because it's like almost half the size of the engine block now you can get a little mr b she weighs about five pounds puts out probably twice with that yeah you you told me about that that might be a future upgrade yeah that's probably five pounds isn't it yeah they're kind of heavy and it's kind of hanging over the front there yeah yeah yeah beautiful what size webers are those these are uh dual 45s okay yeah so you know you get that nice sound when you get on the gas right right now is it uh still 2 liter or is it 2.2 or you got anything to that this is a board 20 over okay so we wanted to give it a little more juice it has a 292 cam right heavy duty lifter springs and and uh valves and we have the rocker locks on it but it's not too my uh wild and i wanted to kind of keep it more in that traditional b sedan type so what are we making about 175 something like the 950 i haven't dynoded it yet because the car just got finished but i'm gonna say it's it's a solid probably 150. yeah maybe 160 but 150 seems about right and i always love these aftermarket braces this is who is that from that's a nice piece so this is a company called mason engineering um which is actually made in the valley here um but they don't make them for the 2002s anymore unfortunately so i took this off of one of my other cars oh really why i mean i'd love to buy another one actually yeah i mean it's a nicely made piece i suppose you can make one if you are sure yeah but wow i'm surprised you'd think that would be just the first thing a bmw buyer would want yeah they still make them for e30s and other cars but for some reason not the 2002 anymore and i love these old-school fuses i remember you could actually open the hood oh i have a blown fuse thank you now you've got to crawl underneath and open some stupid door you can't find which is behind the natchez tray agreed yeah yeah i mean these are always so convenient and these old style fuses when they do okay it's not connected there you go yeah they are really easy to work on and convenient what gauge is this for this is a vacuum gauge yeah okay well just so many nice touches is that a stock radiator is that a modified so this is actually a stock radiator and i prefer that early look um so this is actually a triple core uh thinset core radiator so on a hot day this car still runs really cool and you have an oil cooler right here correct that's nicely done that's obviously not a stock piece that's an after market right yeah yeah we had to do a lot of up there and what do we have here these two are these are the breathers because the one thing on this car to make it race legal you could take this and race this in vara it actually has a lot of safety features and i have a fire extinguish all the different things that you need to be compliant and legal from belts okay so you race it i haven't raced it but i do plan on doing some track days absolutely i had one that i used to take you know out at watkins glen once in a while when i was in college and um you know it's it's been a long time so i'm looking forward to are you from back east originally i grew up actually in buffalo new york yeah oh i love it originally from here but yeah that's where i grew up yeah yeah i love buffalo it's a great car town pierce arrow and yes that museum is wonderful too the museum is great yeah the pierce arm museum is really worth a visit yeah i think buffalo once had more at the turn of the century had more millionaires per capita than almost any city in america yeah absolutely there's some fantastic architectural museums there too and beautiful homes because a lot of the timber barons were in buffalo so they had all the best mahogany steel and timber and everything yeah that's a great thing and and very good pizza in buffalo yes absolutely a lot of italians up there but yeah okay but enough about that enough about that tell me about the suspension what do we have for shot so we have a ground control suspension on this it's set firm but not too firm i like to have a little bit of spring in the car especially for canyon roads where this is mainly going to be used yeah that's people make things so stiffly sprung i kind of like gordon murray's thing he makes road cars like the f1 rides really nicely but it's so light you know it doesn't have to be i get some of these modern cars they got their accaro you know carbon fiber bucket and i'm getting kidney punched every 10 minutes yeah you know please no i i like something yeah this is firm but um it's not what i call break your back from you know hard our little vdo here yeah so that's actually for the speedometer okay oh is this a satellite it is a satellite one correct yeah these are really cool if you want to do away because so many times you put a different engine or something in the car and there's no mechanical connection to drive the the speedo and the tech so you do this saddle i mean when you go through a tunnel it disappears right and it comes back right again yeah yeah i think yeah i experienced that up in angelus crest yeah it gets rid of cables and you don't hear that you know yeah yeah so it seems to be working pretty good cool and uh i was cur we were curious if that was going to be the the best place for it and it seems to be working and this is your manual shock adjustment here is that correct um is that what these do yeah so that can deal with your camber right so you can move that and set your camber and uh i believe these are the koni shocks that are right in the ground control suspension kits this is actually my first ground control out of the many cars that i've had yeah pretty pleased with it thus far all right let's close the hood up here and see this piece is in here correct yeah i leave that in there just to we'll put this down again absolutely sometimes you might have to just push down a little bit on it and then just slide the pin in here yeah there we go these pin set holes were there when i got the car so i figured i'd leave them there and i love the interior i love i love the the cloth insert and the in there i guess that's a plaid isn't it yeah yeah yeah uh yeah that's beautifully done yeah these are the uh these are the shiel 300 type seats i couldn't find the original shield seats that they used on the alpena cars right so i had gts make these well those look great i think those are terrific i don't know what the the other bmw seats look like but they can't look better than this so that's that's really terrific yeah i want to make sure it kind of maintained period correctness right you got the drill pedals which look great even the drill gear shift knob which is funny yeah yeah that's one that you see a little more typical on porsches but i kind of wanted to add it to match that yeah i already sell guys you skip a couple of lunches you have to drill the gear shift knob yeah very nice and you got a full roll cage in it obviously correct nobody's getting in that back seat any time soon yeah yeah that's actually a hatch and that houses the accounts yeah it has the battery and fire suppression and radio is actually in there yeah well a lot of thought went into this restoration this do you have two fire suppressions here yeah one front one back yeah oh that's great yeah and um yeah the dash actually is is a nice feature uh that is actually a csl dash has been cut down and modified oh okay and i have a partner that i work with on these build shad essex noted that i really love the uh dash of the early 1600s when we were coming up with this concept he actually said hey let's do some mock-ups and and came up with the wrap underneath and it actually has a functional glass box too it has excuse me a glove box so it's a fiberglass dash but it has a lot of really nice embellishments on the aluminum pieces and all the knobs and that got rearranged so it kind of looks like has that like maybe homogelated uh race car kind of looking no it looks great and i i used to love the csl coupes yeah you know uh they rusted out they were built by carmen i think who did yes so the build quality was not great but i remember when i worked at the dealership i had to what we used to do was cars would come into new jersey and we didn't sell enough cars to put them on a truck so i would drive them back and there would be test miles when the customer went why does this car have 212 those are test miles that was me you know ringing the thing on the freeway but i remember that six cylinder at csl that was the most turban like engine i'd ever driven just so incredibly smooth torquey i just thought that was the greatest car had that terrific greenhouse i mean it was really just a fabulous fabulous car and everyone i've looked at they're kind of rotted out or been modified a little too much and stuff like that you know yeah i i actually have a 70 cs uh 2800 cs oh pretty solid but it does need restoration yeah and does have a couple of those little gremlins that you mentioned about the carmen body five-speed or automatic uh it is actually it's a four-speed but i do have a uh five-speed uh for it to go into the car so you're a bmw purist you're the that's your favorite kind of car i mean it's the car that i that i know the most i've actually had 40 of these cars 40. yeah wow so yeah i've been uh i started i got the first one when i was 19 and i kind of got hooked and when i used to live in the bay area where a lot of these cars live i used to go to the mechanic auctions and the charity auctions and and find cars and fix them up and uh sell them as a hobby and a little extra cash did you ever have 40 at one time or was it eight oh eight at one time i've curbed the habit a little bit i only have four right now oh okay well that's interesting yeah any completely stock i mean you ever look to that you always like to modify them i prefer to modify them a little bit and make them fun you know with these cars and you don't have to go too far to have a fun car i do have one that's stock and and that's also fun to drive and give an experience of the before and after you know there's something about this period i just like where all four wheels are the same size and the car sits sometimes big big big giant wheels in the back small it just seems i i like that look you know i have a very early lamborghini mirror and that sort of has four wheels approximately about the same and just the way it sits i like well let's go about you know these were so practical you had a full-size trunk let's show the trunk yeah absolutely because these were considered a great family car i mean that's a big chunk and you obviously got a fuel cell in there yeah and as you can see these are the fire sprayers back here how many gallon is that uh so this one here is i believe an 11 gallon tank but then you know you get the foam and that takes up almost a couple so the uh car and i did fill it up here because you get about a hundred miles with this i know that i can go to newcomb's ranch and and back to my house so that's all good okay i was here to get about 100 miles on a fuel fuel cell on this fuel cell yeah i could have gone with a larger one what is it about 12 gallons yeah this i think is 11. 11. okay oh that is small yeah well since you're not carrying a spare tire yeah exactly so it's also as you know proportional to your right foot on what your mileage is going yeah and obviously as you said it's so clear this is a rotisserie restoration beautifully done did you have a lot of body rot in here because i can't see where it's been patched yeah this was actually a very solid car um there was very i think there was a couple minute holes that needed to be addressed but the whole car was actually soda blasted um and then uh rotisserie done for the whole prep and i i actually light scanned the whole car too so i have a digital rendering of it and what exhaust system are you using this here is actually um the super sprint exhaust and i really prefer the exhaust on these cars because of the sound the sound quality i mean is this a period exhaust i remember the all the magazines had exhaust systems for this every custom they bought everybody yes is it one of those is it a modern interpretation i believe this is a pretty period piece in fact this is actually the alpena uh exhaust system okay uh that they have out of the catalog because typically the exhaust would come out on this side here right that's what i remember yeah so we decided to want to move that and over there and make it look like it was factory to come straight out and that's how they did it more on their race cars or the kit that you could buy back in the day i never said why bmw when they did the alpenas they made them automatics did they like on the last the later ones correct the ones i go yeah the z88 alpena you want the sport model don't you you want the one jay i couldn't agree with you more it doesn't make any sense yeah i like you got the phony fuel cap on there very nice yeah yeah i added the locking one because last week somebody after i uh left autobucks somebody stole the the old one i had really just took your gasket from autobooks not from autobox i went and saw and visited a friend and then i came out and i was like ah my gas caps gone wow so i was like do you think you're trying to siphon gas or steal the gas cap good luck because as you know you got a fuel cell yeah i don't know i think because it was a new old stock vintage really nice one that had the the bmw printing on it and i never take it off because you have to open the truck to fill the car right and you oh i remember this i'm not sure if this is the first year maybe 72 was for the heated window that was like oh yeah that was like a cool option in new england that was like the greatest option you weren't out there scraping it you know yeah yeah i have to say when i lived in buffalo uh i did i did use it yeah california not so much very nice and okay kept rear bumper but not front bumper yeah i always like the chrome bumpers and the round i think 73 was the last year for the round taillight it was correct i don't know why they went to that square it wasn't square it looked like a shoebox kind of yeah i just i it was not attractive there must have been some government reason that it had a backup light or something else in it yeah they had the bigger bumpers from 74 to 76 that they sold here the us bumpers they called it so i don't know if that had anything to do with the design aesthetics sometimes they don't change just for the sake of change you could get these new with air conditioning i think but it was like a third of the price of the car yeah i believe um that air conditioning they didn't really sell that back in in germany so it was more of an american thing and i think bear made it and it was more of an after-market dealer installed package right right yeah but if the what was the car about 3 300 3 400 yeah and the air conditioner was like seven or eight hundred yeah i think it was huge it was somebody told me it was like like nine hundred dollar adder and it was mediocre at best right tell me about the wheels whose wheels are those yeah so this is another thing that i really liked about the car to buy um these are the old compo motives and i always loved these wheels and i tried to buy a set and with my friend up north i had the running joke of one day i'm just gonna have to buy the car and ten years later i did oh there you go very good let's see the front boy the grill's in nice shape is that your valance on the bottom is that enough so this is actually a company called cool works up north and this is one of the wide ones that they used to make and i don't know if they make that one anymore but it was always been my favorite and then um we added the zeus fastener so that you know if you have to tow the car or whatever you can actually just quickly take a screwdriver and take it off yeah those fasteners are great yeah they call them zeus but you spell it with a d yes exactly yeah so yeah i remember when i first went researching those many years ago i'm like why is it coming up oh got it yeah and then you get the mount olympus and all this other stuff totally 100 what would you take it for a drive absolutely you'll be the first person to drive it outside of myself cool actually that roll cage is not too intrusive not too bad one thing i like about the car bring back some memories yeah thank you for having the horn working nobody has the horn work yeah people always go oh yeah we're going to fix that they get so excited don't want to drive around yeah actually um i had to go through two horn rings to make that work it's kind of a challenging thing to find for these cars luckily they have some good sources it's a it's a decent combination with the three nine limited diff and the five speed and side drops i love the way the dash is laid out everything you can see everything right at a glance yeah it's um quite functional right and it almost looks like it was kind of made for the car well it's going whether by design or accident the wheel does not block anything yeah i hate these cars i'm going to work i have to keep going like this to see the attack yeah and that's one of the reasons why that wheel is on that yeah we did a lot of mock-ups with that to make sure that everything would be right with the gauges because i agree with you i don't like when you can't see the gauges yeah right stiff with the cage in that and uh there'll be a few things that i'll tune up well it's not stiff it's just right yeah you know i mean it it's still what it's supposed to do yeah yeah i like a car with a little bit of spring in it it's driven a lot of these cars where people make them rock hard and i just it's really kind of kills some of the enjoyment up great on a track but for canyon roads i like the drilled knob that's nice yeah you know if i'm half a second slower i'm okay with that don't like the sound of side drafts right oh yeah sounds great now do you like to build stuff and just move on to the next car do you keep them forever obviously you don't um i have one of these um it's actually a japanese clone yeah it's got a little bit of a bitey clutch not full race but i went one under that um i do have one that i've had for about uh almost 20 years oh okay and that's just kind of a fun driver um it's a really nice car and i just i enjoy that one for different reasons but i usually end up fixing them up and selling them this one um you know when chad and i were working on the build really wanted to go next level on it so i would say that you know um would like to have some fun with it for a while how do you like the csls it's been so long i just wonder if it's it'll be a huge disappointment after driving so many modern cars you know i just remember as a kid delivering them to customers with really comfortable seat you know and it's yeah just that i'd never driven a six cylinder it was as smooth as that yeah the engine really it was the smoother than that the cs's are great cars to drive um and i've driven a few and you can do a lot with them too a lot of people um they get rid of the zenith carbs and they'll put side drafts on it or a more modern fuel injection and uh you can really have a nice sporting touring type car yeah and they can be made quick if you want them to but i kind of like them as a nice sporting touring car obviously a little heavier than these well i like cars in this area you know i've got a twin cam 63 porsche carrera there beautiful and uh the fun is just watching the tack make yeah i have so many cars to go ring okay now i'm in jail what happened yeah you know the tax moves so so quickly by the time i look i'm almost at eight but you know yeah sometimes it's fun to you know drive a slow car fast yeah but it's inching because that 60 degree career once you're moving it's a fast car yeah i mean it can hold a nice base i mean you can cruise all day with that attack pretty close to seven grand and that's where it loves it just loves that you know yeah those roller bearing cranks they put in there it's a it's a really working hard that motor it's probably also working hard to find someone to work on one too yeah yeah but beautiful car yeah for sure remember you said the hand yeah yeah i've only had two with the sunroof huh yeah yeah and you know the sunroof is kind of like a hot tub you use it the first two weeks you have it and then yeah you never open it again it's like yeah look oh then you go bank and then the little the wire breaks and okay now you have a stuck something yeah you got to work on those and yeah um you know these cars are kind of a fishbowl with all the windows anyway i just never really felt a need that i had to have a serve you know wouldn't shy away from a good car that had one but i prefer not having it but it's nice you can run this car all day and yeah it doesn't get hot with that triple core radiator yeah it really is look at that yeah belly you got a 160 thermostat in there is that what's in there you ever had any experience with evan school what's our experience with what evan's cool the waterless uh coolant yeah yeah i i hear that stuff's great um i haven't ran it on one of these yet but i hear it's really good well besides your aluminum motors you know yeah i put in all my classics and stuff you know my package it's life in the car cooling you pull it inside gotta my package the water pump is starting to leak all right you drain everything i'll pull in the water i pull the water pump out and i notice there's a screw that goes into this shaft to hold the impeller on huh and i think oh boy i'm gonna have to hammer this out i put a screwdriver and i get a half a turn it tucks right out because there's no there's no oxygen you know there's no rust it's amazing to wear with cast iron blocks too uh yeah yeah well this was a cast iron block nice i mean what a pump was nice it's actually how i came in this morning oh what do you mean yeah i i have a space at whiteman airport is that where you keep the cars out there yeah can you work on them up there yeah yeah it's nice most airports don't let you work on yeah half of it yeah they're they still do and uh you know there's a lot of plane and car guys out there and uh i like it because you can go out there at any time and it's you know it's a lot of fun to drive yeah right the cam really starts to come on at 45 to 65 you really feel it right you run over a dime and you can tell if it's head or tail i believe that yeah it's nice you feel the road right in these older cars and young guys think it's so amazing there's no power booster there's no power steering you know right i always say this nowadays younger guys think 3 000 pounds is a light car right but these are what 2300 maybe yeah 23 24. i put this probably somewhere between like 21 and 22. yeah it's not a serious diet plan what brakes are in this so i have actually e12 brakes on the front with uh vented and drilled rotors and the e12 was uh early five series okay so you really keep it all bmw right primarily this car is bmw correct yeah you just run right you have premium fuel yeah uh you know you can run regular premium fuel in these and not have too many problems once you go into that 305 or 328 cam then you gotta start running the 100 octane you might have lifter chatter this is a nice all-around camp right now oh it's right when i'm on the road i'm just racing myself i'm having a good right because somebody you know one thing about the cops if you're by yourself to cut you a break if it's two guys dicing you're screwed exactly yeah you know let the right slow down take it easy you know yeah i kind of like to drive my own drive and just enjoy the vehicle there's racetracks for the other stuff what was the first year 67 yeah i believe they were selling them in 66. they kind of build it as like but that was the 1600s 1600 correct and then a couple of the engineers they're two liter motors in their 1600s and they made a push for that i think hoffman did too when he was selling them and they started selling the 2002's and that really took off in the late 60s it's loud but not too loud it's kind of you know it's not bad at all it's manageable you ever finish a car you always just constantly yeah i would say that this one here is uh close to being finished there's a few things left to do on it um as the car was just recently finished but uh i'm kind of happy with where it is and you know being a tinkerer and that you always think about what else could i do to it but i'm pretty happy with the results i wonder how many of these are left must be quite a few no i think it depends on where you live like when i lived nine years in the bay area yeah and they were plentiful right because like you don't really need a car with ac you know you're gonna be stuck in traffic and you can make the cars run really well and uh drive it all the time so there's a lot of them up there and um they were kind of a coveted car so you know vintage air makes a great unit that fits these do they it doesn't wave i mean it compresses like this big yeah smaller than your alternator and it really makes the car so enjoyable yeah i think on the next one i'm going to do uh air conditioning for sure and uh you know without having the dynamat here right you're getting a lot more heat coming to the firewall but you know those vintage air units you put on cold yeah you don't need the dynamite you mean it's not hitting more than keeps up it's amazing i always wind up turning them down a little bit yeah i might have to do uh an upgrade maybe it's interesting with these cars because after i don't dry one for a while say yeah it's on business trips and that and then i get in one it's like one of those cars it just always feels like home to me yeah is this your first time in the best you see second actually yeah but it is different i've never gone this duration just did a test drive around the airport to kind of get some rattles out you know i would jump around and check things out well dorian thanks for bringing this it's really terrific i've been wanting to do one of these for a long time because i haven't found one i liked and as soon as i saw this at the bookstore i said oh this this is the perfect one it turned out to be true excellent well thank you jay i appreciate that you really liked the building oh yeah enjoyed driving the car well this is my childhood you know this is my first real experience with sports sports cars you know working at foreign motors you know and i just got to drive everything that's great and these were so incredible when they came out because everything else at the time was a compromise you know yeah they are wonderful cars i'll never get tired of them no i mean clean design still looks modern plenty of headroom maybe a leg room an actual truck you know i mean it's a car if you're a young guy with a family you can have a sports sedan even today you can put kids in the back yeah that's a nice thing you know even as a college student i liked it that you know i could take it to a track or be utilitarian and throw things in the back and just uh uses my everyday drug well keep up the good work and whenever you build something interesting let us know we'll we'll put it on the show i would love to have you drive your next one jay uh we will do that thanks see you guys next week uhit's a lot of fun to drive yeah right the cam really starts to come on at 45 to 65 you really feel it right you run over a dime but you can tell it was head or tail i believe that one episode of jay leno's garage the car we're featuring today 1973 bmw 2002. i have a soft spot for these because when i was in college i worked at a place called foreign motors in boston and we sold bmw peugeot mercedes-benz rolls-royce bentley anything foreign because it sounds funny now but those were foreign cars and the bmw was just starting to hit its stride the 1600 had come out it was a huge hit and then the 2002 and the tii this is what i call part of our street grab series sometimes when i'm out driving around i see a car like i furiously flag down the owner and say i love your car tell me about it you want to be on the show and i was at the auto books which is a bookstore in burbank where people congregate on the weekends and i saw it parked there as you can see it stands out if you're a cop you're not going to miss this if it's going 66 and a 65 you're probably going to get a ticket because it's just you see it coming the owner's name is dorian hicklin and he's done the restoration on this he's knowledgeable about the car so let's find out about it dorian come on in how you doing jay good to see you my friend good to see you yeah i saw him at the bookstore and i said hey let's do this and he said sure so i appreciate that so what did you start with was it a project car was it a completely stock car you modified tell us about it this was actually a car that a friend of mine had owned up in the bay area and he had it for many years and kind of sat outside went inside outside and i always really was fond of the car and wanted to do a cafe kind of b sedan back date build right and with this car we negotiated a deal after many years and finally i went and picked it up it was kind of in a sad worn state so this had a full frame off rotisserie restoration now stock it was a four cylinder with a two liter two liter correct two liter and i think the stock horsepower was 125 something like that the tii was 125 but the stock was probably around 95 to 100 horsepower i know it sounds almost funny now it's so little it's like motorcycles right but this was considered so fast and so good handling back in the day correct i mean especially in new england people love them every vermont english litter professor smoked a pipe and drove either or one of these because it just had a cool factor because there really were no sporty small sedans that could hold four people you got a falcon or a comet or a valiant or something or volkswagen which really wasn't that either this was really one of the fiat maybe but this had the german quality and the german build and were just fantastic to drive by 73 is probably a five speed correct yeah five speed actually was kind of an option but most of them were four speeds so this actually has a five-speed from a 320 bmw oh okay and also a 390 limited diff as well from a 320. okay now obviously with the exception of taking the bumpers off and some of the trim you haven't modified the body a whole lot but imagine everything else is pretty much correct yeah there's been a lot of little uh nonces and touches that we've added to this from the interior to suspension and a lot of things that may has not been done in a lot of these bmw 2002s i think well can we open the hood let's absolutely pull the pin here yeah sometimes you gotta press down a little bit there you go ah very pretty beautifully done nicely detailed i'm always amazed at the size of alternators from this period because it's like almost half the size of the engine block now you can get a little mr b she weighs about five pounds puts out probably twice with that yeah you you told me about that that might be a future upgrade yeah that's probably five pounds isn't it yeah they're kind of heavy and it's kind of hanging over the front there yeah yeah yeah beautiful what size webers are those these are uh dual 45s okay yeah so you know you get that nice sound when you get on the gas right right now is it uh still 2 liter or is it 2.2 or you got anything to that this is a board 20 over okay so we wanted to give it a little more juice it has a 292 cam right heavy duty lifter springs and and uh valves and we have the rocker locks on it but it's not too my uh wild and i wanted to kind of keep it more in that traditional b sedan type so what are we making about 175 something like the 950 i haven't dynoded it yet because the car just got finished but i'm gonna say it's it's a solid probably 150. yeah maybe 160 but 150 seems about right and i always love these aftermarket braces this is who is that from that's a nice piece so this is a company called mason engineering um which is actually made in the valley here um but they don't make them for the 2002s anymore unfortunately so i took this off of one of my other cars oh really why i mean i'd love to buy another one actually yeah i mean it's a nicely made piece i suppose you can make one if you are sure yeah but wow i'm surprised you'd think that would be just the first thing a bmw buyer would want yeah they still make them for e30s and other cars but for some reason not the 2002 anymore and i love these old-school fuses i remember you could actually open the hood oh i have a blown fuse thank you now you've got to crawl underneath and open some stupid door you can't find which is behind the natchez tray agreed yeah yeah i mean these are always so convenient and these old style fuses when they do okay it's not connected there you go yeah they are really easy to work on and convenient what gauge is this for this is a vacuum gauge yeah okay well just so many nice touches is that a stock radiator is that a modified so this is actually a stock radiator and i prefer that early look um so this is actually a triple core uh thinset core radiator so on a hot day this car still runs really cool and you have an oil cooler right here correct that's nicely done that's obviously not a stock piece that's an after market right yeah yeah we had to do a lot of up there and what do we have here these two are these are the breathers because the one thing on this car to make it race legal you could take this and race this in vara it actually has a lot of safety features and i have a fire extinguish all the different things that you need to be compliant and legal from belts okay so you race it i haven't raced it but i do plan on doing some track days absolutely i had one that i used to take you know out at watkins glen once in a while when i was in college and um you know it's it's been a long time so i'm looking forward to are you from back east originally i grew up actually in buffalo new york yeah oh i love it originally from here but yeah that's where i grew up yeah yeah i love buffalo it's a great car town pierce arrow and yes that museum is wonderful too the museum is great yeah the pierce arm museum is really worth a visit yeah i think buffalo once had more at the turn of the century had more millionaires per capita than almost any city in america yeah absolutely there's some fantastic architectural museums there too and beautiful homes because a lot of the timber barons were in buffalo so they had all the best mahogany steel and timber and everything yeah that's a great thing and and very good pizza in buffalo yes absolutely a lot of italians up there but yeah okay but enough about that enough about that tell me about the suspension what do we have for shot so we have a ground control suspension on this it's set firm but not too firm i like to have a little bit of spring in the car especially for canyon roads where this is mainly going to be used yeah that's people make things so stiffly sprung i kind of like gordon murray's thing he makes road cars like the f1 rides really nicely but it's so light you know it doesn't have to be i get some of these modern cars they got their accaro you know carbon fiber bucket and i'm getting kidney punched every 10 minutes yeah you know please no i i like something yeah this is firm but um it's not what i call break your back from you know hard our little vdo here yeah so that's actually for the speedometer okay oh is this a satellite it is a satellite one correct yeah these are really cool if you want to do away because so many times you put a different engine or something in the car and there's no mechanical connection to drive the the speedo and the tech so you do this saddle i mean when you go through a tunnel it disappears right and it comes back right again yeah yeah i think yeah i experienced that up in angelus crest yeah it gets rid of cables and you don't hear that you know yeah yeah so it seems to be working pretty good cool and uh i was cur we were curious if that was going to be the the best place for it and it seems to be working and this is your manual shock adjustment here is that correct um is that what these do yeah so that can deal with your camber right so you can move that and set your camber and uh i believe these are the koni shocks that are right in the ground control suspension kits this is actually my first ground control out of the many cars that i've had yeah pretty pleased with it thus far all right let's close the hood up here and see this piece is in here correct yeah i leave that in there just to we'll put this down again absolutely sometimes you might have to just push down a little bit on it and then just slide the pin in here yeah there we go these pin set holes were there when i got the car so i figured i'd leave them there and i love the interior i love i love the the cloth insert and the in there i guess that's a plaid isn't it yeah yeah yeah uh yeah that's beautifully done yeah these are the uh these are the shiel 300 type seats i couldn't find the original shield seats that they used on the alpena cars right so i had gts make these well those look great i think those are terrific i don't know what the the other bmw seats look like but they can't look better than this so that's that's really terrific yeah i want to make sure it kind of maintained period correctness right you got the drill pedals which look great even the drill gear shift knob which is funny yeah yeah that's one that you see a little more typical on porsches but i kind of wanted to add it to match that yeah i already sell guys you skip a couple of lunches you have to drill the gear shift knob yeah very nice and you got a full roll cage in it obviously correct nobody's getting in that back seat any time soon yeah yeah that's actually a hatch and that houses the accounts yeah it has the battery and fire suppression and radio is actually in there yeah well a lot of thought went into this restoration this do you have two fire suppressions here yeah one front one back yeah oh that's great yeah and um yeah the dash actually is is a nice feature uh that is actually a csl dash has been cut down and modified oh okay and i have a partner that i work with on these build shad essex noted that i really love the uh dash of the early 1600s when we were coming up with this concept he actually said hey let's do some mock-ups and and came up with the wrap underneath and it actually has a functional glass box too it has excuse me a glove box so it's a fiberglass dash but it has a lot of really nice embellishments on the aluminum pieces and all the knobs and that got rearranged so it kind of looks like has that like maybe homogelated uh race car kind of looking no it looks great and i i used to love the csl coupes yeah you know uh they rusted out they were built by carmen i think who did yes so the build quality was not great but i remember when i worked at the dealership i had to what we used to do was cars would come into new jersey and we didn't sell enough cars to put them on a truck so i would drive them back and there would be test miles when the customer went why does this car have 212 those are test miles that was me you know ringing the thing on the freeway but i remember that six cylinder at csl that was the most turban like engine i'd ever driven just so incredibly smooth torquey i just thought that was the greatest car had that terrific greenhouse i mean it was really just a fabulous fabulous car and everyone i've looked at they're kind of rotted out or been modified a little too much and stuff like that you know yeah i i actually have a 70 cs uh 2800 cs oh pretty solid but it does need restoration yeah and does have a couple of those little gremlins that you mentioned about the carmen body five-speed or automatic uh it is actually it's a four-speed but i do have a uh five-speed uh for it to go into the car so you're a bmw purist you're the that's your favorite kind of car i mean it's the car that i that i know the most i've actually had 40 of these cars 40. yeah wow so yeah i've been uh i started i got the first one when i was 19 and i kind of got hooked and when i used to live in the bay area where a lot of these cars live i used to go to the mechanic auctions and the charity auctions and and find cars and fix them up and uh sell them as a hobby and a little extra cash did you ever have 40 at one time or was it eight oh eight at one time i've curbed the habit a little bit i only have four right now oh okay well that's interesting yeah any completely stock i mean you ever look to that you always like to modify them i prefer to modify them a little bit and make them fun you know with these cars and you don't have to go too far to have a fun car i do have one that's stock and and that's also fun to drive and give an experience of the before and after you know there's something about this period i just like where all four wheels are the same size and the car sits sometimes big big big giant wheels in the back small it just seems i i like that look you know i have a very early lamborghini mirror and that sort of has four wheels approximately about the same and just the way it sits i like well let's go about you know these were so practical you had a full-size trunk let's show the trunk yeah absolutely because these were considered a great family car i mean that's a big chunk and you obviously got a fuel cell in there yeah and as you can see these are the fire sprayers back here how many gallon is that uh so this one here is i believe an 11 gallon tank but then you know you get the foam and that takes up almost a couple so the uh car and i did fill it up here because you get about a hundred miles with this i know that i can go to newcomb's ranch and and back to my house so that's all good okay i was here to get about 100 miles on a fuel fuel cell on this fuel cell yeah i could have gone with a larger one what is it about 12 gallons yeah this i think is 11. 11. okay oh that is small yeah well since you're not carrying a spare tire yeah exactly so it's also as you know proportional to your right foot on what your mileage is going yeah and obviously as you said it's so clear this is a rotisserie restoration beautifully done did you have a lot of body rot in here because i can't see where it's been patched yeah this was actually a very solid car um there was very i think there was a couple minute holes that needed to be addressed but the whole car was actually soda blasted um and then uh rotisserie done for the whole prep and i i actually light scanned the whole car too so i have a digital rendering of it and what exhaust system are you using this here is actually um the super sprint exhaust and i really prefer the exhaust on these cars because of the sound the sound quality i mean is this a period exhaust i remember the all the magazines had exhaust systems for this every custom they bought everybody yes is it one of those is it a modern interpretation i believe this is a pretty period piece in fact this is actually the alpena uh exhaust system okay uh that they have out of the catalog because typically the exhaust would come out on this side here right that's what i remember yeah so we decided to want to move that and over there and make it look like it was factory to come straight out and that's how they did it more on their race cars or the kit that you could buy back in the day i never said why bmw when they did the alpenas they made them automatics did they like on the last the later ones correct the ones i go yeah the z88 alpena you want the sport model don't you you want the one jay i couldn't agree with you more it doesn't make any sense yeah i like you got the phony fuel cap on there very nice yeah yeah i added the locking one because last week somebody after i uh left autobucks somebody stole the the old one i had really just took your gasket from autobooks not from autobox i went and saw and visited a friend and then i came out and i was like ah my gas caps gone wow so i was like do you think you're trying to siphon gas or steal the gas cap good luck because as you know you got a fuel cell yeah i don't know i think because it was a new old stock vintage really nice one that had the the bmw printing on it and i never take it off because you have to open the truck to fill the car right and you oh i remember this i'm not sure if this is the first year maybe 72 was for the heated window that was like oh yeah that was like a cool option in new england that was like the greatest option you weren't out there scraping it you know yeah yeah i have to say when i lived in buffalo uh i did i did use it yeah california not so much very nice and okay kept rear bumper but not front bumper yeah i always like the chrome bumpers and the round i think 73 was the last year for the round taillight it was correct i don't know why they went to that square it wasn't square it looked like a shoebox kind of yeah i just i it was not attractive there must have been some government reason that it had a backup light or something else in it yeah they had the bigger bumpers from 74 to 76 that they sold here the us bumpers they called it so i don't know if that had anything to do with the design aesthetics sometimes they don't change just for the sake of change you could get these new with air conditioning i think but it was like a third of the price of the car yeah i believe um that air conditioning they didn't really sell that back in in germany so it was more of an american thing and i think bear made it and it was more of an after-market dealer installed package right right yeah but if the what was the car about 3 300 3 400 yeah and the air conditioner was like seven or eight hundred yeah i think it was huge it was somebody told me it was like like nine hundred dollar adder and it was mediocre at best right tell me about the wheels whose wheels are those yeah so this is another thing that i really liked about the car to buy um these are the old compo motives and i always loved these wheels and i tried to buy a set and with my friend up north i had the running joke of one day i'm just gonna have to buy the car and ten years later i did oh there you go very good let's see the front boy the grill's in nice shape is that your valance on the bottom is that enough so this is actually a company called cool works up north and this is one of the wide ones that they used to make and i don't know if they make that one anymore but it was always been my favorite and then um we added the zeus fastener so that you know if you have to tow the car or whatever you can actually just quickly take a screwdriver and take it off yeah those fasteners are great yeah they call them zeus but you spell it with a d yes exactly yeah so yeah i remember when i first went researching those many years ago i'm like why is it coming up oh got it yeah and then you get the mount olympus and all this other stuff totally 100 what would you take it for a drive absolutely you'll be the first person to drive it outside of myself cool actually that roll cage is not too intrusive not too bad one thing i like about the car bring back some memories yeah thank you for having the horn working nobody has the horn work yeah people always go oh yeah we're going to fix that they get so excited don't want to drive around yeah actually um i had to go through two horn rings to make that work it's kind of a challenging thing to find for these cars luckily they have some good sources it's a it's a decent combination with the three nine limited diff and the five speed and side drops i love the way the dash is laid out everything you can see everything right at a glance yeah it's um quite functional right and it almost looks like it was kind of made for the car well it's going whether by design or accident the wheel does not block anything yeah i hate these cars i'm going to work i have to keep going like this to see the attack yeah and that's one of the reasons why that wheel is on that yeah we did a lot of mock-ups with that to make sure that everything would be right with the gauges because i agree with you i don't like when you can't see the gauges yeah right stiff with the cage in that and uh there'll be a few things that i'll tune up well it's not stiff it's just right yeah you know i mean it it's still what it's supposed to do yeah yeah i like a car with a little bit of spring in it it's driven a lot of these cars where people make them rock hard and i just it's really kind of kills some of the enjoyment up great on a track but for canyon roads i like the drilled knob that's nice yeah you know if i'm half a second slower i'm okay with that don't like the sound of side drafts right oh yeah sounds great now do you like to build stuff and just move on to the next car do you keep them forever obviously you don't um i have one of these um it's actually a japanese clone yeah it's got a little bit of a bitey clutch not full race but i went one under that um i do have one that i've had for about uh almost 20 years oh okay and that's just kind of a fun driver um it's a really nice car and i just i enjoy that one for different reasons but i usually end up fixing them up and selling them this one um you know when chad and i were working on the build really wanted to go next level on it so i would say that you know um would like to have some fun with it for a while how do you like the csls it's been so long i just wonder if it's it'll be a huge disappointment after driving so many modern cars you know i just remember as a kid delivering them to customers with really comfortable seat you know and it's yeah just that i'd never driven a six cylinder it was as smooth as that yeah the engine really it was the smoother than that the cs's are great cars to drive um and i've driven a few and you can do a lot with them too a lot of people um they get rid of the zenith carbs and they'll put side drafts on it or a more modern fuel injection and uh you can really have a nice sporting touring type car yeah and they can be made quick if you want them to but i kind of like them as a nice sporting touring car obviously a little heavier than these well i like cars in this area you know i've got a twin cam 63 porsche carrera there beautiful and uh the fun is just watching the tack make yeah i have so many cars to go ring okay now i'm in jail what happened yeah you know the tax moves so so quickly by the time i look i'm almost at eight but you know yeah sometimes it's fun to you know drive a slow car fast yeah but it's inching because that 60 degree career once you're moving it's a fast car yeah i mean it can hold a nice base i mean you can cruise all day with that attack pretty close to seven grand and that's where it loves it just loves that you know yeah those roller bearing cranks they put in there it's a it's a really working hard that motor it's probably also working hard to find someone to work on one too yeah yeah but beautiful car yeah for sure remember you said the hand yeah yeah i've only had two with the sunroof huh yeah yeah and you know the sunroof is kind of like a hot tub you use it the first two weeks you have it and then yeah you never open it again it's like yeah look oh then you go bank and then the little the wire breaks and okay now you have a stuck something yeah you got to work on those and yeah um you know these cars are kind of a fishbowl with all the windows anyway i just never really felt a need that i had to have a serve you know wouldn't shy away from a good car that had one but i prefer not having it but it's nice you can run this car all day and yeah it doesn't get hot with that triple core radiator yeah it really is look at that yeah belly you got a 160 thermostat in there is that what's in there you ever had any experience with evan school what's our experience with what evan's cool the waterless uh coolant yeah yeah i i hear that stuff's great um i haven't ran it on one of these yet but i hear it's really good well besides your aluminum motors you know yeah i put in all my classics and stuff you know my package it's life in the car cooling you pull it inside gotta my package the water pump is starting to leak all right you drain everything i'll pull in the water i pull the water pump out and i notice there's a screw that goes into this shaft to hold the impeller on huh and i think oh boy i'm gonna have to hammer this out i put a screwdriver and i get a half a turn it tucks right out because there's no there's no oxygen you know there's no rust it's amazing to wear with cast iron blocks too uh yeah yeah well this was a cast iron block nice i mean what a pump was nice it's actually how i came in this morning oh what do you mean yeah i i have a space at whiteman airport is that where you keep the cars out there yeah can you work on them up there yeah yeah it's nice most airports don't let you work on yeah half of it yeah they're they still do and uh you know there's a lot of plane and car guys out there and uh i like it because you can go out there at any time and it's you know it's a lot of fun to drive yeah right the cam really starts to come on at 45 to 65 you really feel it right you run over a dime and you can tell if it's head or tail i believe that yeah it's nice you feel the road right in these older cars and young guys think it's so amazing there's no power booster there's no power steering you know right i always say this nowadays younger guys think 3 000 pounds is a light car right but these are what 2300 maybe yeah 23 24. i put this probably somewhere between like 21 and 22. yeah it's not a serious diet plan what brakes are in this so i have actually e12 brakes on the front with uh vented and drilled rotors and the e12 was uh early five series okay so you really keep it all bmw right primarily this car is bmw correct yeah you just run right you have premium fuel yeah uh you know you can run regular premium fuel in these and not have too many problems once you go into that 305 or 328 cam then you gotta start running the 100 octane you might have lifter chatter this is a nice all-around camp right now oh it's right when i'm on the road i'm just racing myself i'm having a good right because somebody you know one thing about the cops if you're by yourself to cut you a break if it's two guys dicing you're screwed exactly yeah you know let the right slow down take it easy you know yeah i kind of like to drive my own drive and just enjoy the vehicle there's racetracks for the other stuff what was the first year 67 yeah i believe they were selling them in 66. they kind of build it as like but that was the 1600s 1600 correct and then a couple of the engineers they're two liter motors in their 1600s and they made a push for that i think hoffman did too when he was selling them and they started selling the 2002's and that really took off in the late 60s it's loud but not too loud it's kind of you know it's not bad at all it's manageable you ever finish a car you always just constantly yeah i would say that this one here is uh close to being finished there's a few things left to do on it um as the car was just recently finished but uh i'm kind of happy with where it is and you know being a tinkerer and that you always think about what else could i do to it but i'm pretty happy with the results i wonder how many of these are left must be quite a few no i think it depends on where you live like when i lived nine years in the bay area yeah and they were plentiful right because like you don't really need a car with ac you know you're gonna be stuck in traffic and you can make the cars run really well and uh drive it all the time so there's a lot of them up there and um they were kind of a coveted car so you know vintage air makes a great unit that fits these do they it doesn't wave i mean it compresses like this big yeah smaller than your alternator and it really makes the car so enjoyable yeah i think on the next one i'm going to do uh air conditioning for sure and uh you know without having the dynamat here right you're getting a lot more heat coming to the firewall but you know those vintage air units you put on cold yeah you don't need the dynamite you mean it's not hitting more than keeps up it's amazing i always wind up turning them down a little bit yeah i might have to do uh an upgrade maybe it's interesting with these cars because after i don't dry one for a while say yeah it's on business trips and that and then i get in one it's like one of those cars it just always feels like home to me yeah is this your first time in the best you see second actually yeah but it is different i've never gone this duration just did a test drive around the airport to kind of get some rattles out you know i would jump around and check things out well dorian thanks for bringing this it's really terrific i've been wanting to do one of these for a long time because i haven't found one i liked and as soon as i saw this at the bookstore i said oh this this is the perfect one it turned out to be true excellent well thank you jay i appreciate that you really liked the building oh yeah enjoyed driving the car well this is my childhood you know this is my first real experience with sports sports cars you know working at foreign motors you know and i just got to drive everything that's great and these were so incredible when they came out because everything else at the time was a compromise you know yeah they are wonderful cars i'll never get tired of them no i mean clean design still looks modern plenty of headroom maybe a leg room an actual truck you know i mean it's a car if you're a young guy with a family you can have a sports sedan even today you can put kids in the back yeah that's a nice thing you know even as a college student i liked it that you know i could take it to a track or be utilitarian and throw things in the back and just uh uses my everyday drug well keep up the good work and whenever you build something interesting let us know we'll we'll put it on the show i would love to have you drive your next one jay uh we will do that thanks see you guys next week uh\n"