The Drive - Best ten-year-old sportscar

[AndrewJM928]

Came across this video this morning, and thought some of you might enjoy it. http://www.thedrive.com/video/8603/w...ar-you-can-buy

[RABAUKE]

Thanks for the link, very interesting video. I always enjoy car reviews both for entertainment and information. The one thing I often find though is that most of the reviews are so strongly biased towards maximum performance, who gets round the ring the fastest etc. And that creates the push to bet the latest and greatest performance features. I get the marketing, but frankly I can scare the shit out of myself with my Z as much as I could with a newer more teched up better performance numbers car. Many of these reviews don't talk about the actual real world driving that most of us do. I love driving my Z4MC, I've had Porsches and other sports car. The Z is different and I think these guys spoke to that as opposed to the hard nuts comparison between the Z and Cayman or what ever. Again, a good watch....just my two cents.

[flicky]

hmm I wonder what this means for the values of our cars That being said, I've always felt the z4m coupe never got enough respect in the mainstream--maybe this'll change things a bit?

[wdb]

All they do is talk! WTF.

[RABAUKE]

Originally Posted by wdb

All they do is talk! WTF.

not enough budget to drift around the ring?

[NickyC]

Greatest cars nobody seems to know about. I can't take a drive in mine without at least 2-5 compliments from other people every trip. People just love the car.

[bosstones]

10 years in and I still love driving mine. My only gripe is a 1st world problem: need better audio options since mp3 discs don't play well in the stock headunit.

[Hawkeye]

Originally Posted by bosstones

10 years in and I still love driving mine. My only gripe is a 1st world problem: need better audio options since mp3 discs don't play well in the stock headunit.

That is what the AUX jack is for!

[GuidoK]

lol aux jack?
Loads of mp3 cd emulators that let you use steering controls and get title info on the screen to use with an sd card or iphone playlist etc.


But what was that wining from them about the roadsters?
'we have to talk about that in a minute' and it never came back?

Nothing is nicer than when the sun comes out to get the roof off and enjoy the sunshine. At least in parts where there are 4 seasons.

[antennahead]

Originally Posted by bosstones

10 years in and I still love driving mine. My only gripe is a 1st world problem: need better audio options since mp3 discs don't play well in the stock headunit.

All my burned MP3 discs play great in my head unit. Don't want to jinx myself, but I never have any problems. 98% of the time all the metadata shows artist/song/folder info correctly as well.

[86Zed]

Article could not have come at a more opportune time - drove a Lotus Elise all weekend on the best CA backroads and came home with a severe case of Lotus desire....


Slowly backing myself away from the ledge...

[chickdr]

Originally Posted by GuidoK

lol aux jack?
Loads of mp3 cd emulators that let you use steering controls and get title info on the screen to use with an sd card or iphone playlist etc.


But what was that wining from them about the roadsters?
'we have to talk about that in a minute' and it never came back?

Nothing is nicer than when the sun comes out to get the roof off and enjoy the sunshine. At least in parts where there are 4 seasons.

Out of curiosity what are you referring to? I have been using the OEM iPod connector with my business unit and it works fine, but has no artist info. I would love to be able to use an SD card and have artist info on the display.

[Vanne]

Originally Posted by 86Zed

Article could not have come at a more opportune time - drove a Lotus Elise all weekend on the best CA backroads and came home with a severe case of Lotus desire....


Slowly backing myself away from the ledge...

Back away from the ledge... Slowly!!!
Nothing to see here.. move along please..

[The HACK]

Did that car belong to a member here? Looks familiar.

[GuidoK]

Originally Posted by chickdr

Out of curiosity what are you referring to? I have been using the OEM iPod connector with my business unit and it works fine, but has no artist info. I would love to be able to use an SD card and have artist info on the display.

There is for instance the GROM interface:
http://gromaudio.com/store/all-bmwt.html

Does usb audio (mp3 tag display; 6 folders directly accesseble, iphone/android a2dp and playlist playback. Also bluetooth carkit posibility, so very versitile, only mp3 playback from usb stick is somewhat limited.

There's the intravee:
http://www.toysinyourcar.com/acatalog/intravee.html
thats an alpine ainet interface, so the ainet iphone interface is accesible (so playlist accesibility)

And if you're content with playing mp3's from an sd card (this is also the one I have) there's the cp600BMW which probably has the best mp3 integration because you can both select 6 directories, but within that directory you can skip subdirectories: so if you have in each of those 6 main directories (accesseble like it were a cd in a changer) say 25 albums with a total of 500 songs you can skip albums within that main directory.
http://lifestyle.maintronic.de/en/pr...p3-player.html
Not cheap though and I dont know if theres a usa distributor. Audio quality is very good and it has (apart from the analog output) also a build in digital output if you're one of the few that has a bmw with digital dsp.
Being able to change subdirectories in those 6 main folders gives you the ability to find specific albums within reasonable comfort.
But you cant get a directorylist with for example all subdirectories. (That is not possible with any of them except for the next option)


And if you want something really fancy, take a raspberry pi with pibus:
http://pibus.info/
Lets you control an in car multimedia computer by steering wheel controls and has a pretty good audio output (better than stock raspberri pi).
But for this you obviously need a navi prof screen and is pretty geeky to get it running etc.
Normally you use the tv in (required) for the screen input, but also for that there are other options with better image quality (there is a german company that makes a vga to Ibus image converter, so theres no composite converstion quality loss)

[XMetal]

I have the GROM (I wrote a tiny review on it here somewhere) - definitely very cost effective way to add tons of MP3 music to the car. Navigating around it (for those with NAV) is a bit of a pain, so I just organize my music genre via folders. Regarding mp3 tag display - it will only display the 1st 10 characters and will ping back and forth between file name/song name/album info. I still couldn't get them to display it in the format similar to the indash CD player when playing MP3s

[jmillet]

Originally Posted by The HACK

Did that car belong to a member here? Looks familiar.

Sharp eye. This highly modified Z4MC formally resided with its owner in Seattle and was a familiar sight at Pacific Raceways. The owner and I had lots of fun chasing each other around the track. The owner moved to New York and the car now resides at the Classic Car Club of Manhattan. http://classiccarclubmanhattan.com/about/

[chickdr]

Originally Posted by GuidoK

There is for instance the GROM interface:
http://gromaudio.com/store/all-bmwt.html

Does usb audio (mp3 tag display; 6 folders directly accesseble, iphone/android a2dp and playlist playback. Also bluetooth carkit posibility, so very versitile, only mp3 playback from usb stick is somewhat limited.

There's the intravee:
http://www.toysinyourcar.com/acatalog/intravee.html
thats an alpine ainet interface, so the ainet iphone interface is accesible (so playlist accesibility)

And if you're content with playing mp3's from an sd card (this is also the one I have) there's the cp600BMW which probably has the best mp3 integration because you can both select 6 directories, but within that directory you can skip subdirectories: so if you have in each of those 6 main directories (accesseble like it were a cd in a changer) say 25 albums with a total of 500 songs you can skip albums within that main directory.
http://lifestyle.maintronic.de/en/pr...p3-player.html
Not cheap though and I dont know if theres a usa distributor. Audio quality is very good and it has (apart from the analog output) also a build in digital output if you're one of the few that has a bmw with digital dsp.
Being able to change subdirectories in those 6 main folders gives you the ability to find specific albums within reasonable comfort.
But you cant get a directorylist with for example all subdirectories. (That is not possible with any of them except for the next option)


And if you want something really fancy, take a raspberry pi with pibus:
http://pibus.info/
Lets you control an in car multimedia computer by steering wheel controls and has a pretty good audio output (better than stock raspberri pi).
But for this you obviously need a navi prof screen and is pretty geeky to get it running etc.
Normally you use the tv in (required) for the screen input, but also for that there are other options with better image quality (there is a german company that makes a vga to Ibus image converter, so theres no composite converstion quality loss)

Thanks for the info. It looks like the Grom would be a good one but from what I am reading it does not display artist info on a monochrome screen so it isn't any better than my OEM iPOD connector....

[XMetal]

Originally Posted by chickdr

Thanks for the info. It looks like the Grom would be a good one but from what I am reading it does not display artist info on a monochrome screen so it isn't any better than my OEM iPOD connector....

It (GROM) does display artist info on monochrome screen (MID), but only the first 10 characters. I have the GROM on my X5 as well, which is non-NAV.

[chickdr]

Originally Posted by XMetal

It (GROM) does display artist info on monochrome screen (MID), but only the first 10 characters. I have the GROM on my X5 as well, which is non-NAV.

Thanks for that. I must have misread it on the website.

[XMetal]

Originally Posted by chickdr

Thanks for that. I must have misread it on the website.

Yeah...I'm not sure which display they're referring to for the monochrome on the website.

Here's their demo on a Z4 without NAV

[w3fl3x]

Originally Posted by jmillet

Sharp eye. This highly modified Z4MC formally resided with its owner in Seattle and was a familiar sight at Pacific Raceways. The owner and I had lots of fun chasing each other around the track. The owner moved to New York and the car now resides at the Classic Car Club of Manhattan. http://classiccarclubmanhattan.com/about/

I thought that wing looked familiar! The riddler! I see no more white baby stig on the rear hatch either.

The talking got really boring half way through.