The 12th Annual E30 Picnic in June delivered again with a whole weekend’s worth of activities for E30 enthusiasts. The weekend starts early for those traveling from out of town as caravans start hitting the road on Thursday from points in Southern California. All caravans from north and south meet on Saturday afternoon at Griots Garage for the Saturday E30 Tech Session. This also serves as a gathering point to caravan to James Crivellone’s house for the Saturday Evening R3VLimited bash. Parking on the tight 2-lane street went on for a quarter mile.
We were treated to fantastic weather for the Sunday Picnic, almost too hot! The typical uber-eclectic mix of E30s showed up, about 195 total E30s this year making the E30 Picnic still the largest E30 car show in the world!
We were treated to fantastic weather for the Sunday Picnic, almost too hot! The typical uber-eclectic mix of E30s showed up, about 195 total E30s this year making the E30 Picnic still the largest E30 car show in the world!
Featured E30s included Chris Forsythe’s recently painted E30 courtesy of Haury’s Lake City collision and Nick Tomanelli’s diesel E30 Pickup! The Lantz Family brought their lightweight white E30 EIP race car; and James Crivellone showed his fresh off the boat from Europe E30 Touring.
The coveted “Furthest Traveled Award” went to Austin, Texas resident Ken Carson who drove his E30 convertible (top down) 2,700 miles to the E30 Picnic! And this was followed by a return appearance by Tony Abatangelo who visited us again from Chicago!
We look forward to seeing everyone’s improvements for next year, including the paint on Steve Questad’s E30 who won the Free Paint Job from Haury’s Lake City Collision. The raffle raised $1,200 for the LeMay Marymount Museum Foundation.
Thanks to our raffle table donors!
425 Motorsports
Bimmerworld
Brad Bowen
BMW Portland
BMW Seattle
Car Tender
Creative Options
E30 Picnic
Griot’s Garage
Guten Parts
Haury’s Lake City Collision
Matt Barner
Motorsport Hardware
Proformance Racing
Puget Sound Chapter
Race Skids
South Lake European
The coveted “Furthest Traveled Award” went to Austin, Texas resident Ken Carson who drove his E30 convertible (top down) 2,700 miles to the E30 Picnic! And this was followed by a return appearance by Tony Abatangelo who visited us again from Chicago!
We look forward to seeing everyone’s improvements for next year, including the paint on Steve Questad’s E30 who won the Free Paint Job from Haury’s Lake City Collision. The raffle raised $1,200 for the LeMay Marymount Museum Foundation.
Thanks to our raffle table donors!
425 Motorsports
Bimmerworld
Brad Bowen
BMW Portland
BMW Seattle
Car Tender
Creative Options
E30 Picnic
Griot’s Garage
Guten Parts
Haury’s Lake City Collision
Matt Barner
Motorsport Hardware
Proformance Racing
Puget Sound Chapter
Race Skids
South Lake European
– Lance Richert
Featured Car: 1985 E30 Diesel Pickup
This car started life as a 1985 325e Automatic with a very rough history of over nice owners and multiple accidents. It was the perfect donor car for this certain unique project. Being a BMW Master Technician for a living I spend my days performing warranty repairs and maintaining the current models on the road I needed an outlet to build that one custom car I’ve always wanted. Being an E30 enthusiast for years it only seemed right to use one in this project. I’ve always had an interest in the old M21 diesel engine from the mid 80’s E28 5-series and always had thought of a good car to transplant one into. I’d seen a couple different E30 truck conversions over the years and it made sense to carry on the idea of a diesel power truck, so the idea was started. Acquiring and building an M21 soon became quite a bit harder than originally thought. It took over six months to locate and assemble everything needed to rebuild the engine from top to bottom. The car itself was the real first fabrication project I have done and it has been a huge learning experience. After talking to multiple people who have built these specific cars before I was able to pretty easily build a plan on how to accomplish this with as little heartache as possible. So after two years of countless hours of welding, fabricating, mechanical assembly, trial and error, and parts fitments the vehicle looks the way it does today. It’s a completely turn key car and runs at a very reliable 38-40mpg. Every year I make the trip to Los Angeles for the yearly Bimmerfest car show and was lucky enough to take the car this last May. Hoping this winter I will dive back into the building process to finish all the needed fabrication and body work to prepare the car for paint. I also have plans for some engine and suspension modifications that are planned for sometime in the future. I’d like to complete the vehicle how I originally envisioned it two years ago and enjoy it as the unique vehicle it’s turning out to be.
– Nick Tomanelli
This car started life as a 1985 325e Automatic with a very rough history of over nice owners and multiple accidents. It was the perfect donor car for this certain unique project. Being a BMW Master Technician for a living I spend my days performing warranty repairs and maintaining the current models on the road I needed an outlet to build that one custom car I’ve always wanted. Being an E30 enthusiast for years it only seemed right to use one in this project. I’ve always had an interest in the old M21 diesel engine from the mid 80’s E28 5-series and always had thought of a good car to transplant one into. I’d seen a couple different E30 truck conversions over the years and it made sense to carry on the idea of a diesel power truck, so the idea was started. Acquiring and building an M21 soon became quite a bit harder than originally thought. It took over six months to locate and assemble everything needed to rebuild the engine from top to bottom. The car itself was the real first fabrication project I have done and it has been a huge learning experience. After talking to multiple people who have built these specific cars before I was able to pretty easily build a plan on how to accomplish this with as little heartache as possible. So after two years of countless hours of welding, fabricating, mechanical assembly, trial and error, and parts fitments the vehicle looks the way it does today. It’s a completely turn key car and runs at a very reliable 38-40mpg. Every year I make the trip to Los Angeles for the yearly Bimmerfest car show and was lucky enough to take the car this last May. Hoping this winter I will dive back into the building process to finish all the needed fabrication and body work to prepare the car for paint. I also have plans for some engine and suspension modifications that are planned for sometime in the future. I’d like to complete the vehicle how I originally envisioned it two years ago and enjoy it as the unique vehicle it’s turning out to be.
– Nick Tomanelli
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