Hi

My name is Tony Chamberlain, for more years than I care to remember I have been messing around with cars.
About 35 years ago I discovered the pleasure of driving BMW's, this started with an MOT failure 1978 316, but what impressed me most was the build quality, lack of windnoise and general all round feeling of being in a car that was well built. Unfortuanetley these early cars were no better than most for their rustproofing and I had many more happy weekends restoring my "new" car.

Things quickly progressed from there, I joined the local branch of our BMW Drivers Club ( now defunct), met many like minded people, and fixed and restored some of their cars and a few more of my own.

I bought my E12 M535i in February 1996, It had been involved in a light front end crash and had already been off the road for a couple of years. There was damage to the front panel, inner wing and bonnet, I thought the price was reasonable at the time and felt that within a few months I could have it back on the road and be enjoying real BMW power.

However the growing responsibilities of married life and fatherhood were beginning to take a hold, and before I knew it 2 years had passed and while I had made progress, it was very slow, then add to this the ever increasing expectations at work, and before long the "M" was shipped up to my dads, where he had the space, covered over and forgotten about.

Fast forward to 2001, the benefits of all that overtime at work had started to pay dividends and we could afford to move to a new house, this one has a double garage, (all my previous works had been carried out in a single back yard, generally in the rain). I rescued the "M" from my dads and tucked it up in the new garage, promising to get on with it soon. You would think that after 9 years of marriage I would have learn't that cars are not the priority, so for the next 5 years it was house renovations and hours and hours of happy DIY, (Joy)

That takes us to late 2006 and the present day, The "M" is currently on holiday in a friends garage, as a brief affair with an 02 project and now a committment to get a Vauxhall Corsa on the road so that my wife can learn to drive, meant that space in the garage was at a premium. The years have not been wasted though, I have gathered all ( I hope) the parts that I need to get the "M" back to its former glory, joined a web site forum (http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/E12_M535i/) , emailed and talked to some great people and have (hopefully) regained a lot of the enthusiasm I need to once again start "Project M".

I have been lucky enough to have had BMW company cars for several years now, and this along with an ongoing retoration of a BMW 6 series with my good friend and neighbour Neil, has kept my love of BMW's alive, and stopped me going rusty.

Well enough about me, please check out the rest of my site.

Regards

Tony Chamberlain