I've been curious about this since I got interested and involved in DE. Why people choose the car they have? I know for me I've wanted a Porsche for everybit of 25 years. I don't know exactly why, but for the strangest reason when I'm driving it I get a feeling of steeping back in time. The reason I love tracking my car so much is because when I'm out there, it just fits. The way I drive and the dynamics of the car, they just work together. I've had my Carrera for about 41/2 years now and I'd like to think that I'll always have one in my garage for the rest of my life. So to answer my own question, it originally started out as fulfillment to a childhood goal but has become a bond between a man and a machine where the two just seem to work together very well.  Please tell me how/why did you end up with the car you have?

 I drive my Turbo because it's my childhood dream car. My father was into Porsches when I was younger (74 911, 78 911SC, 86 Carrera) so I was programmed at a young age. I highschool I dreamed about a 935 with an interior I could drive on the street (like Count Rossi's 917). What I eventually got is not far off. It looks more like a 934 but makes more power.

The M3 was my winter beater. When the 930 went for the big (1.5 year) restoration the M3 became the track car by defaut. I like it so much I kept on modifying it. It's the complete and total opposite of a 930. It surpassed the 930's lap times quite a while ago.

I also race the M3 for pure economical reasons. It's a modern car and is much more reliable. It's also a blast to drive. You can get away with almost anything. Not so in a 930...

When I decided that my kids were old enough and set enough for college I decided that it would be OK for me to own a sports car after 16 years of econoboxes and trucks with a max speed of about 65mph (really). I had seen a bmw z3 coupe whiz by once maybe 4 years previously and it somehow lodged itself in my head. I headed down to bmw and bought an mz3 coupe.

At some point I realized that driving like an idiot on the street was idiotic (gift of being over 40) and I started looking around for less idiotic ways to enjoy my car. I tried autocross but 12 minutes of driving in a day was not making it for me (and if I'd been good it would have been 8 minutes in a day). I found hpde and was hooked. Unfortunately I supercharged my m coupe, which I believe lead to the cv joint breaking on the uphill at lime rock which lead to me needing a new car. I

bought a mini GP because I thought it would be easier to drive (it was) and because it was cool. Once I picked up some speed in the mini GP I ran into a problem with HPDEs. No one wants to be passed by a mini. No pointbys. No fun. Time to go racing.

At this point I really stuck with BMW because most of my friends are with the bmw club. If I'd gone off to some scca formula class I'd be blowing off my painstakingly built social network. I could have turned my mini into a race car or bought a mini race car, but as far as I could tell, minis weren't competitive. The new, cost effective class with a future in bmwcca racing was the specE36. I like the driver to driver aspect of a spec class. I didn't really want to be racing wallet to wallet. There is a little further I could take my car to get to weight, but otherwise it is very close to maxed out in class, for a lot less than jp, but way more responsive than a js car.

It was more of a process than a single choice.

For some reason I have a problem with Porsches. It's not that I don't accept their innate superiority. I've ridden in a well driven gt3. Oh my god. The turn in alone was unworldly. I just cheer when I see a bmw blow by a porsche. I especially cheer when I blow by a porsche. It's an underdog thing I think. Maybe I just like having excuses.  

I am tempted by formula cars. I drove one at skip barber and it's fun being outside, 2 inches from the road in a car tight enough so that you aren't trying to time the suspension roll.

I started driving the car I have (1991 E30 318is) simply because it was the first car I ever owned that had any kind of performance potential. My dad bought the car brand new and gave it to me a couple of years later. I've had it ever since. In the interim, I've owned a few other cars: E30 325iX; E36 323is; and Evo VIII. But I always go back to my old 318 because it's so well-balanced and gives such good feedback.

I started doing driving schools with the BMW club because, well, I had a BMW and it never occurred to me to look anywhere else. Relatively early on, I started instructor training and I've been instructing for a bunch of years now. Even though I've run with just about all the major clubs, I still keep coming back to BMW Club of Canada and BMW CCA events. Like John, that's where my buddies are. I enjoy the camaraderie.

When I was a kid, my dad's friend had a black 911 (can't remember, but I think it was either mid-80's or a 964)... That started it for me. It had power, looks, and class. It wasn't the typical sports car where they just stuck a big motor into an otherwise unremarkable car, this was the whole package. I have wanted one ever since then. When I was 14 or 15, I saw a red 944 for sale in my town. It wasn't the same class as a 911 obviously, but it was still an impressive and good looking car with that fancy gold crest. Although it was well outside of my price range at the time, I realized that I'd be able to eventually afford such a car. A few years later, Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed came out and increased my interest in Porsche even more... I must have spent a thousand hours playing that game over the years.

In 2002, I got into autocross and road course events with the '97 Acura Integra I had at the time and did that for several years with the intent of eventually club racing it. I turbocharged it in late 2003 and it was keeping up with, if not passing, 911's and Corvettes at track days and Time Trials events. Knowing how much trouble (and cost) it was to build and maintain a car that could do that on the road course gave me even more respect for those other cars that it could now run with. In late 2006, I got a decent raise at work and started looking around for a cage for the Integra (I was going to run it in NASA's HU or PT/SU, or my SCCA region's ITE-U), then Chuck Taylor (who eventually became 944-Spec national director) made a post on our local NASA forum trying to get people interested in racing 944-Spec. I had always wanted a 944, and hadn't realized how cheap they had gotten, especially if you don't care about interior condition. I wasn't thrilled with the speed of the 83-88 NA 944's that I had seen on the track previously, so I hadn't thought too much about getting one as a Time Trials car, but for wheel-to-wheel racing it was perfect... all my competition would have the same power, they handled great, they look good, and the costs were pretty low. Shortly after, I bought a red '83 944 and started building it as a race car. My neighbors sure thought I was nuts when I started ripping the interior out of a shiny red Porsche in my driveway. The realities of racing a 25 year old car can be a little frustrating at times, but once you get the bugs worked out, they can be pretty reliable and tons of fun to race. I still have my eye on 911's though... I really want a fun street car again, and the 993 is my favorite 911, with the 964 being a very close second. Between my financial situation improving as I get older, and the price of those cars lowering a bit, I can finally comfortably afford one. I'm currently trying to tell myself that I should really pay off debt before buying one, but I'm still finding myself checking out the used car listings nearly every day...

Like Weston Ive always had a fascination with Porsches. When I was 16 I would pull out the paper every day looking for a 944 that I could somehow convince my parents to buy me (yeah right, i got the family minivan instead). Also, much like Weston, later in life I bought an import, (91 240sx) turbocharged it, then realized I would be racing by myself. I learned about 944 spec from Chuck and how awesome of a class it was. Low Budget, good handling, equal performance racing in the car I'd dreamed about in my youth and I would be racing against my friend Weston who just happened to have the same fascination with the car! 944 Spec has been an awesome class with awesome people, I'm glad I made the choice I did.

Those were some fun events. I still remember multiple occasions in the pouring rain at WGI and you and I were the only cars on the whole track. That's when the Mini was even harder to keep up with.

I race a BMW because I went to see  a pro race when I was 10 and the E36 M3 GTR was the coolest car there by far. Bought one as soon as I could as a daily driver, started doing DEs ASAP, and from then until now is a big expensive blur.

I always lusted after BMWs and Porsches. At first my driving experience started it the totally wrong direction. I got a 1994 Land Rover Discovery. After quickly learning never to buy an English car again (except for modern Minis) I got a 1997 Chevy Tahoe. At least it was reliable and back then I lived in NJ and gas was 1$/Gallon. But I always wanted a BMW so when the X5 appeared I got that. Why did I keep buying SUVs? Well, nobody was around to tell me how stupid that was. My parents and their friends kept saying you need a 4wd tank to survive winter in NJ and even more so in Montreal. How I wish I would have known better. For the price of that stupid Land Rover I could have had a fully loaded 328i at that time. College would have been so much more fun.

But I always liked motorsports and sports cars. So I finally figured out to buy an E46 M3. I was so exited to get it. Finally BMW sent an M3 with the real M3 motor to North America. I happily drove it for a year and found out about the BMW club and that they do track events. September 2003 was my first one. Hooked ever since. Averaged 25 days a year until last year. The only regret I have is that I did not start all this about 6 years earlier.

But how did I end up driving a GT3? I kept finding that trying to keep my M3 both streetable and good on the track was always a compromise and any real progress would require major surgery on the car. The GT3 is as close to a track ready street car as you can get. Even if something needs changing it's not too major and easy enough to do. I also found better support locally for running a Porsche. Having the mechanic learn new things with your car is not fun for me. I like my car to be "routine" for the mechanic working on it and not a new discovery. If I was in Boston or Toronto I probably could have kept modifying the BMW. I also wanted to learn to drive a 911.

And the most important reason why I got the GT3 is so that nobody can tell me that I am not a good pilot. After all, I am a Porsche driver now. ;)