Here are some pictures from last Fridays Cruise In with several local friends. We passed out some of our new Enthusiast stickers and played some corn-hole. Great times like always!

Earlier today we decided to drop in on our friend Reggie to have a look around his shop, Reggies Motorworks. I first met Reggie a few years ago while repairing my E30. It was 2006, he was working out of a pole barn, all I remember, is that there were warehouses, train tracks, some discarded automobiles, and a lot of weeds.

Fast forward a couple years. Reggie stuck with it, did great work, sold parts at fair prices, business grew and now RMW operates of out a 3,000 sq/ft facility in our neck of the woods. Nowadays, he specializes in repair and restoration work, with a healthy dose of metal/rust repair.

You have to see Reggie’s personal Baur Cabriolet in person to truly appreciate the level of craftsmanship at RMW. It’s a near fully restored early 318 with all the work carried out by Reggie himself, you name it, he’s even managed to get the original AC system to blow nice and cold.

If you’re in the area, and you’d like to see what RMW’s all about, be sure to join us at their Friday Night Cruise-In every Friday evening 6-9pm at the Park Street Pub in Westfield (515 Park Street, Westfield, IN 46074).

Jorge has been looking for a decent E36 chassis for a couple months now. Everything has either been too expensive or too weak. From here on, I’ll be known as “Magic Hands”, cause I accidentally stumbled across an awesome deal after only minutes on the internets.

Friday. I decide to take a look, see what I can find that fits the criteria. I find a silver E36 on coils, it’s semi-local, and the price-is-right. Yesterday afternoon, we load up and make the 1.5 hour drive to check it out. We go through the middle of nowhere, wind through some country roads, and end up face to face with it.

It’s a ’92 318i 5 speed on coils and purple Style 5′s, and it’s just the right amount of trashed to make a proper drift car. It runs and drives like a champ. The seats are in surprisingly nice shape, but the door panels are falling apart. The body’s not perfect, but it doesn’t matter, it looks rad, and I’m sure Jorge will crumple one of the corners sooner or later.

The project is scoped out, and we’ll bring details as the tetris pieces come together. Jorge took a few pics this morning on his way in, check them out below.

My M50 drift machine's been replaced with a W210 (I'm thinking 210BMBR for the inevitable europlate).

It’s been a ridiculous year around here; Enthusiast has been doing great, and we’ve helped Midwest Drift Union kicked off it’s first season (we’ll be at Round 4, come say hi if you’re in the area).  With Enthusiast, I’ve made several major changes to the way we operate, trying to improve the product, quicken the turn-around, and now the focus is on communication.  Through all of that, I managed to totally drop the ball with the old Enthusiast blog.

Jorge and I have worked like madmen, and we’re down to a one week turn-around.  That’s not as quick as I’d like it to be, but that’s the best it’s been in literally years.  And well, things are under control now.  I decided to ditch the old blog and all the old posts with it, start fresh and engage and involve our customers.

We’re nearing 10,000 now.  I never thought I would reach 10,000 people with my designs.  I never thought 10,000 would truly appreciate what I’ve done.  It’s an amazing feeling.  They’ve encouraged and critiqued what I’ve done as we’ve gone along since 2007 and made Enthusiast into what it is today.

We’re all enthusiasts.  Watch the blog, subscribe to the newsletter above,  or connect on Facebook or Twitter.  We’ll be throwing some events and get-togethers in the near future, and we want you there.  It’s time to connect Enthusiast with the enthusiasts.