Scene: BMW design room. A fan turns slowly overhead. A handful of men and women sit at a sleek metal table. Many are wiping their noses. Their white shirt sleeves are rolled up. Their neckties are at half-mast. A bathroom mirror lies face-up on the table. The corners of the mirror still have drywall stuck to the glass. The mirror has been ripped off the office bathroom wall.

"I have an idea. It's so...RRRGH! Let's take the Z3 Roadster and turn it into a station wagon!"

*Snnniiifff*

"Yea! ...and then let's not put more seats into the car. We'll keep it a two-seater."

[others exuberantly chanting and pounding their fists on the table in agreement] "Wasted space!...Wasted space!...Wasted space!"

*Snnniiifff*

"Yea! yea! Yea! ...and a DOG FENCE behind the front seats. All those German Shepherd owners build their lives around animals. They buy anything dog-related!"

A designer picks up a dry forty-gallon aquarium over her head. It's filled with sand and albino Ball Pythons. "Subaru has cornered that market too long!" She shouts and throws the aquarium at a marble statue of Christopher Edward Bangle.

*CRASH*

Snakes everywhere.

*Snnniiifff*

"Hold up! Hold up! Hold...hold...hold...hold Hogan. No one is going to buy a station wagon. Call it something else."

On the table, a Ball Python wraps itself around a glazed eclair, trying to suffocate it.

"SHOOTING BRAKE! Yea! That's what...GUNS! And make the suspension stiffer than I AM!"

*Snnniiifff*

An E46 comes crashing though the office wall. The driver, wearing a tie on his head like a headband, leans out the smashed passenger window while flakes of drop-ceiling tile come fluttering down like snow.

"ALABAMA!" he yells.

[End Scene]

The BMW M Coupe is the right kind of late-bloomer get-the-girl-in-your-30's-because-you-have-worth-now car for Los Angeles. This gender-bending vehicle accelerates faster than the fourth generation Supra I wrote about last week.

BMW uses the 3.2L I6 S54B32 motor from the E46 M3, making 315hp at 7400 rpm. Take that, Supras! You think your slow-revs are so hot? You suck up all those beta-bro auction dollars. You creep expectations to the boost threshold where MAYBE power lies.

BMW's naturally-aspirated S54B32 motor makes usable horsepower as early as 2000 rpm, ideal for maintaining individuality in L.A. traffic, and not getting bullied by the collective consciousness of the freeways. You need that power because you need an opening. You need an opening NOW. The opening is one lane over and you need it now! No time to build revs and manifold pressure. No! Stomp the pedal down and GO GO GO! The M Coupe will deliver.

I'm from rural Pennsylvania. I will never adapt to L.A. traffic unless I move here and stay here for five years. With this M Coupe, I had a chance to stay alive as a visitor that day.

"Oh, be careful," said my dad before I left for the west coast a week earlier, "L.A. drivers are crazy."

He wasn't wrong, he was just over-simplifying. What he should have said was: "L.A. drivers are crazy and you better pray if you ever want to turn left, or turn right, or merge, or do anything other than drive straight. No one will let you in. There will never be a gap in traffic. The cars will keep coming. Be assertive."

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The M Coupe is one of the better cars to survive L.A as a novice. Six throttle bodies, one for each cylinder, means each combustion chamber doesn't have to share. Me. Me. Me. Now. Now. Now. You want to pull into Jerry's and eat now? Shove the M Coupe's nose into the four-foot gap so you can merge right. If you don't do it now, you will be sucked forward forever. Without assertive driving, and the M Coupe's snap-acceleration and "I'm Loco" styling, you will stay in the 405 salmon stream. You will go with the whim of the mass, right to the ghetto.

I was doing it! The M Coupe responded to the roughness of my hand on its shifter and my Mumford and Sons-esque kick-drum stomps on its accelerator pedal. Ahead I went, grabbing gaps and finding my exit. No one honked. I was in a tightly-screwed BMW in L.A. at 5.pm. I was in everyone's face. I had four exhaust ports letting the whole country know that I was no pushover.

"You're doing well," said the owner.

I didn't respond. I focused on my breathing as if the M Coupe was the midwife and I was birthing the entire state. I made forceful eye contact with Camry drivers and lesser Infinitis. They think they can step? My tail-pipe predator-bark says otherwise! I jammed my way back onto Jefferson Boulevard near Culver City.

The I6 engine simmered down to a calm but alert 1000 rpm.

"You did well," added the owner.

I exhale and thank him. I'm sweating. The AC is on full blast. The M Coupe was great. But I knew that, even with the great machine's help, I only survived L.A. Rush Hour though the sheer force of my concentrated panic. Thanks for the fun, L.A., but I had enough. Take me back to The Commonwealth.

My afternoon was turning into night. Chris Hayes, the sound engineer for The Smoking Tire and the creator of Shout Engine (a website for podcasts), tells me that he will give Roman and I a ride back to our hotel at Los Angeles International Airport on one condition: I do the driving.

"You're not done," said Hayes. "Your L.A. experience isn't finished until you do this at night. Out in the parking lot is a Ford Fiesta ST with more than three things done to it."

Mr. Regular's LA Adventure will continue next week

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