Cars - Chapter eleven 2007 BMW 550i

My current car - until tomorrow, when I am selling it - is the best car I have ever owned. Not the best looking, mind you, but the most reliable, and most performant car that I have had the good sense to drive. It is a 2007 BMW 550i, a solid 5 series with a nice sized V8 (oddly enough, it is 4.8 liters, not 5.5 liters like the name would imply). 0-60 in 5.4 seconds, and all that at 20 mpg:

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Did I say 20 MPG? I meant 19.14 MPG. How do I know with such precision, you may ask? The answer is that I have recorded ever tank of gas that I put in that car. (You can see the data here.) I am not ordinarily this obsessive, but it started when I picked up the car and I asked the salesman what the gas mileage was. He couldn't answer, so I said I would find out. Then after about a year you can't really stop recording the data. The cool thing is that you can also follow gas prices over the past four years.

This car has some great technology that is now pretty much taken for granted. Sonar in backing up and driving forward (for help in parking), satellite radio, heated seats, bluetooth connection to your phone (though I seldom talk on the phone while driving. It is much easier to text [just kidding]). And fast? This car was probably faster than 95% of the cars on the road. Did I drive fast? Well, not really fast. Maybe occasionally. But it was nice to know that the power was there when you needed it.

I will miss this car.