My neighbor, friend, fellow SpecE30 racer and co-conspirator in this plot, Vic Hall, and I have been talking about building a car for One Lap of America for the past year or so. We were unable to settle on the best platform, within our very limited budget, until we began reading great reviews of the new One series. We talked about our options for about 30 seconds more before settling on the One and immediately went to James Clay at Bimmerworld for help.

James had done our Spec E30 build and provided tons of advice over the years. From the moment that we laid out the idea James was IN and making plans. I ordered a 135 with the sole intent of being the fastest BMW in this year's One Lap of America. No small feat considering that BMW has become a sponsor of the race and entered a new M3 to be driven by a BMW Performance Center Instructor. With better brakes than the M3, a couple hundred pounds less ballast and a twin turbo motor ripe for performance software it seemed like the perfect car to take on BMW's “premier” sports sedan.

I ordered mine with humiliating the M3 as the deciding factor in most decisions: no nav/iDrive, no comfort/cold weather package, sports package and an unsuccessful attempt to delete the sunroof.I picked up the car and the same day drove to BimmerWorld for the transformation. In a short couple of weeks the guys at BimmerWorld had built what is likely the first highly tuned and fastest One in North America.