MT's Winner-Take-All Tour Wins BMW 323i Convertible

The two-laner was the stuff of dreams. Twisting through thick, black forest, undulating up and down rolling Bavarian hills, passing sweeping meadows framed with a backdrop of rugged snow-dusted mountains, it was a pure driver's road from the first eager summons of the throttle. The taut-handling 323i ragtop clung to the blacktop like a roller coaster roaring through a living postcard, its Z-rated Pirellis clawing deep into each bite of asphalt.

Soon we reached our entrance onto Germany's legendary Romantic Highway. More hills, a smattering of turns, and there it was. Far to the left, nestled in the picturesque Alpine foothills was the most famous castle in Europe, King Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein, the very one Walt Disney eyed as a model for his Disneyland centerpiece. And all we could think of was, "Please don't wake us now."

Just a couple months earlier, Gilbert Quant, of Lubbock, Texas, had been working particularly hard. To relax, he'd picked up his issue of Motor Trend and was flipping through the pages when a mailing card dropped out. It was an entry form for our contest; the grand prize was a new BMW 323i Convertible, outfitted with Z-rated Pirelli P6000 SportVeloce tires, plus a trip to Europe to pick it up. "Oh, why not?" he thought. So he filled it out, dropped it in the mail, and forgot about it.

A few months later, Gilbert received a registered letter informing him that he'd won the contest's grand prize. "Yeah, right," he thought to himself, "What are they going to hit me up for when I respond?" It wasn't until he received a follow-up call that he began taking the notion somewhat seriously. Still, he figured, these things don't really happen to ordinary people; where's the catch? His skepticism motivated him to make a few calls on his own, and gradually his doubt began to turn to cautioned amazement. Just maybe these things do happen to ordinary people.

A few weeks later, as he stepped off the airplane in Munich, Germany, it still all seemed a fragile dream, although one that appeared a bit more real the following day when he was handed the keys to his brand-new 323i convertible.

As we crossed the Austrian border into the Alps, thick clouds were backed up on the north side of the ridge like a swarm of stock cars fighting through Turn One. This was definitely not top-down weather. The road twisted and writhed like a boa with heartburn as it climbed toward a high Alpine pass, and the 323i made the most of its high-revving 168 horsepower, passing slow-moving locals and lethargic tour buses in the brief windows of opportunity the route grudgingly offered up. Clearly, this wasn't Lubbock.

Higher still, the curtain of rain transformed into thin flakes of snow, whipping against the windshield with wispy playfulness. Yet the Bimmer was in its element, greeting each switchback with crisp precision and eager responsiveness. Its sophisticated DOHC inline six growled with delight while Gilbert ran it through the gears time after time, just for fun. On the ground, the Pirelli P6000s barely acknowledged the precipitation, maintaining their tenacious grip as if suctioned to the surface. Then, as we crested the pass, it was as though a cosmic switch had been thrown, the rain thinned out, a bright sun burned through, and the blue firmament opened up before us like a celestial welcome mat. Directly ahead was a thick, sloping carpet of green, punctuated by the sharp steeple of an Austrian church. Life is really good.

The new 323i nameplate is a bit of a misnomer. Breaking with the BMW tradition of letting engine displacement determine a model's code, the 323i is actually powered by a 2.5-liter DOHC inline six-cylinder. For '98, this new 2.5 (not to be confused with the like-sized six in BMW's former 325i) can be had in either the 323is coupe or 323i convertible, which replace the former 318i versions that were powered by 1.9-liter four-cylinders. Got that?