Get Ready To Fall In Love With The Bmw 3 Series

Get ready to fall in love with the BMW 3 Series all over again

- Nkosiyati Khumalo

A3 series once made me cry. I was eight, on a family holiday to Swaziland, and on this particular leg of the see-the-family tour, we spent a week with Auntie Constance (Simelane, a dear friend of my mother’s and who later became Swaziland’s deputy prime minister). She was full of personality, and at the time lived on a working farm with a ton of Jack Russell terriers – lots of fun for young me. This particular visit proved special, however – during the week we visited, her Ford Escort was in the shop and she had borrowed her sister’s car, a dolphin-grey E30 BMW 318i. It wasn’t the sporty version at all, yet it was everything a BMW has always been: refined, agile, with sport coursing through its veins.

As a young boy with a strong affinity towards anything on four wheels, I grew quite attached to the car – so much so that when it came time to give the car back to my other auntie, I wept. As in, crocodile tears wept. As if someone had told me Christmas was canceled forever. Inconsolable tears. But the next day, when it came time to say goodbye to the actual driver of the car – actual family – I apparently couldn’t be bothered to even frown. It’s a crime I still pay for today at any family get-together – ‘Where were my tears?!’