Jason Cammisa Explains Why the BMW E30 Wagon Was Actually a Happy Accident
You’ve seen him here on our YouTube channel before, and you may follow him on social media, but if you’ve ever wondered what sort of machines Jason Cammisa drives in his free time, the latest episode of Jay Leno’s Garage might be just what you need.
Jason’s an all-around car fanatic, but he has a real soft spot for German brands. The BMW 325i Touring that’s the star of today’s show is a prime example. Leno and Cammisa kick things off by discussing Jason’s backstory with the car (there’s cow poop involved—maybe lots of it). As you’ll quickly realize, whoever ordered this car back in the day was the good kind of crazy: Cammisa explains that every performance-enhancing option was specc’ed, but that nothing else was—cruise control, A/C, power windows, nada.
Now, Cammisa found this car in Germany but was able to import it to the United States as a gray-market car, much to his delight. (He explains some of the commonalities between the Euro and U.S. models and regulations that enabled this, but we’ll leave that for the film.)
Speaking of Euro models, Cammisa goes on to explain that the E30 Wagon wasn’t even a part of BMW’s original plan when the chassis debuted in 1982. (Whenever he’s talking BMWs, we can all but guarantee that we’ll walk away having learned something. Dude’s a walking encyclopedia like that.) We’ll let him explain the happy accident behind the birth of the wagon, but suffice it to say, it’s not what we expected.
Unsurprisingly, Cammisa’s experience with the car has evolved over time. Back when E30s were just commonplace little runabouts, “99.9 percent of people were oblivious to it,” he explained. “And then that remaining one-hundredth of one percent of people would lose their minds.” Things have obviously changed a bit, as the respect for those cars has grown.
Be sure to check out the whole episode, posted below, to hear Jay and Jason talk more BMW geekery, and to see what Jay thinks when he gets a chance to wheel it about on the open road.
