Southern Comfort In A Six
Late summer, a Sixer, and Southern highways through time.

Cradled in the dark red leather which an unknown German chose years ago as the proper covering for my seat, I sit behind a three-spoke steering wheel bearing the blue and white roundel. At midday after a 5AM start from my home in northwest Arkansas, I am driving across the heart of Dixie.

Running in and out of light showers at an indicated 80 MPH, my 633CSi coupe tracks straight and true on immaculate 4-lane asphalt. After eastern Arkansas' barren flatlands and the bumpy monotony of I-40, Mississippi's verdant green fields and this smooth southern autobahn are like a garden. On this steamy day in early August, the road to Elvis' birthplace has become a freedom road for me. I have decided to grasp at the straw of a final road trip for the summer. The college classroom and my teaching duties await me barely two weeks away. Today, it is just the coupe and me, as my wife and I shared over 2000 miles together in the 633 only a few weeks ago.

Together the BMW and I travel along Highway 78 from Memphis southeast to Tupelo. Ahead waits Birmingham, then I-20 eastbound to Atlanta, my destination at the end of 800 miles and 12 hours at the wheel.

I love Mississippi. The traffic is light, and there are neither tailgaters nor state troopers to mar my rapid transit through the land of cotton. In the heat of August, the coupe's 3.2 liter straight-six runs turbine smooth. The coolant temp needle sits a bit below the halfway mark, the trip computer indicates 21.5 mpg, and the outside temperature is 95 degrees. The AC copes reasonably well as the coupe's body slices through the hot southern air.

Solo road trips are a great time to cogitate. It's only natural that a lot of think-time behind the wheel is spent pondering both the act of driving and one's own vehicle. As the miles roll by, I find myself considering how much pleasure is to be had simply from driving. In cruise mode, the Sixer gives many of the sensations of flight. Driving it alone tends to block out everything but the experience itself -- it is all-absorbing. The BMW happily occupies me with visual, aural and tactile sensations via the seat of my pants, the instruments, and the sight of the road passing swiftly beneath the coupe's sharklike prow. The frameless windows transmit the rush of wind flowing over and around the body. To my ears, the wind is music.

Although the 633's interior ergonomics date from the 1970s, they remain excellent. Nothing is extraneous, nothing is without function. The orthopedically designed seats do what they were designed to do. The instruments are legible and clear. The climate and radio controls are angled toward the driver to make them easier and safer to view and operate. Even though some reviewers of the period criticized the interior as stark, I think of it instead as purposeful, efficient, German. The red leather seats and door panels are tastefully complimented by black dash and trim, and contrast with the silver gray of carpeting and headliner. By design, everything in this cockpit has a reason to be.

Once we are past Tupelo and its Elvis museum (next time), Mississippi gives way to Alabama as Highway 78 takes a lengthy and obstruction-filled detour. The road varies between congested two and four lanes, and my average speed takes a dip. This goes on for a couple of hours, until we finally reach Birmingham and slot our way onto I-20 eastbound. Traffic speed on the Interstate averages in the low 80's, with more than a few drivers blowing past at 90+. Everyone is in a hurry to reach Atlanta, where I finally join I-285, a giant wacky racer's speedway encircling the city. Some of the worst offenders here are young women in Honda's and Hyundai's, seemingly intent on driving as fast as their cars will run. The BMW and I have entered combat, but my weapon of choice proves more than equal to the challenge.

I spend a quick day and a half in Atlanta with my brother and his wife. A highlight is our Saturday visit to Blue Moon Cycle in Norcross, a haven for BMW motorcycles old and new. It's where my brother bought his 1975 R90/6, the same bike he rode from Atlanta to San Diego and back a few summers ago. On this day, my 633CSi is the only 4-wheeled BMW in the parking lot.

Inside Blue Moon, the Beemers range from the very old to the very new, from a spiritually potent 1928 R52 ("starts first kick - runs great") and `38 R35 ($4500) to BMW's latest retro cruisers. Over the years, proprietor John Landstrom has collected one of the largest displays of vintage motorcycles in the south. Besides being an authorized BMW (and Moto Guzzi) dealer, John does a thriving mail order business in vintage 2-wheeled BMW parts and accessories. His shop is one of those must-see places for any BMW enthusiast, car or bike. He also has a nice website (www.bluemooncycle.com).

Back in the Sixer, my brother drives while I get some unaccustomed time in the right seat. Merging onto I-285, the Atlanta traffic on this Saturday is not bad. In fact, in an instant, it turns very good. We pull into formation with a dark blue Ferrari F355 idling along at 75 mph in the far left lane. With our BMW sitting off its right flank, I snap a picture. The first F355 I've seen, the mid-engine berlinetta is truly beautiful.

After church and lunch with my brother and his wife the next morning, the 633 and I are alone again as we depart Atlanta for the final outbound leg of our journey. I drive north on I-75 toward Tennessee for about an hour until exiting onto one of the south's oldest two-lane highways, U.S. 411. It's a road my dad and his dad before him traveled in their Chevy's, rolling through towns in northeast Georgia and southeast Tennessee whose names I have known since I sat on my mother's lap in our family's `55 Bel Air, watching raindrops on the passenger vent window streak backwards in the slipstream.

On this Sunday afternoon, driving the BMW north on 411 in and out of light rain, city limit signs come and go in swift progression. Chatsworth, Etowah, Madisonville. Memories of past journeys along this route crowd into the present. Just as it did in 1958, the 2-lane ribbon winds through green wooded hills and burgs named White and Tennga and Benton. The rain streams upwards and back as the wipers sweep the glass. Together, the coupe and I are silent partners through space and time.

After three hours behind the wheel, I turn into the driveway of my mother's country home south of Maryville, and park the coupe behind her new Mercury Grand Marquis ("nice car, mom"). It's blue, with V8 power and a ride that devours Interstate highways. She loves it, and I'm glad for her.

The next day, I drive up old Tennessee Highway 72 into the heartland of my ancestors, along a TVA lake that used to be the Little Tennessee River at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Smokies are a wonder, their tops regularly enveloped by the smoky blue haze which gives them their name. The paved pathway through their quiet grandeur leads the 633 and me into the heart of an old forest. Together, we are surrounded by the beauty and solitude which was home to the Cherokees and later Scotch-Irish who settled these mountains.

Driving the 15 miles of Foothills Parkway between Chilhowee Dam and Townsend in the middle of a weekday, I am met by only one other car. The 2-lane road is exceptionally smooth, with gentle sweeping curves that constantly climb and descend the ridge of Chilhowee Mountain. It is the same road I drove with my new bride in 1976 on the day I bought my first sports car, a `69 Austin Healey Sprite. For many reasons, the Parkway is a favorite road.

The next morning I say farewell to mom and the Smokies, and head west on I-40 out of Knoxville. In a day that sees twelve hours of interstate cruising, the coupe's engine consumes 35 gallons of gasoline and a pint of oil as we pass through Nashville, Memphis, and Little Rock. Finally reaching Fort Smith just before the Oklahoma border, I turn north off the freeway and begin to come alive again during my journey's final hour, driving a rural 2-lane state highway that leads home.

On this final leg of my summer escape, I ponder the polaris silver companion with whom I have spent over 30 hours in five days. Built in BMW's Dingolfing plant east of Munich in December 1982, my 633CSi was first titled three months later in St. Louis and spent the next two years as a lease vehicle. Fifteen years and 130,000 miles later, I am her fifth owner. My garage has been her home now for six months.

Little do I suspect as I pull into my driveway that I will sell the coupe to a friend and fellow club member just a few weeks from now. Even less do I imagine that another, identical, 633CSi will take its place in my garage come spring.

But that's the future. As I switch off the engine at the end of my drive across Dixie, I find myself feeling toward the German coupe as my grandfather might have felt toward his faithful horse after a long ride through the mountains of East Tennessee. When my aging but still vital BMW pulses with life, what matters is the present moment. My Sixer has a few more horsepower than my grandfather was used to, but I suspect the feeling is the same. -Rick Sparks

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