An iconic parade

MotorsEmissions: the beemer aficionado
So, how did you enjoy St Patrick's weekend?

Hope you weren't one of the hundreds of idiots who spent it in a Garda station getting charged with drink driving. Of all times to get busted. How stupid can you get? It's like walking into an arse-kicking contest wearing a big pair of novelty plastic buttocks and expecting to emerge unbooted.

As for me, I have a confession. I spent St Patrick's day doing something that, whatever way you look at it, sounds desperately sad. I drove 50 miles to a desolate car park in Co Laois to meet a crowd of like-minded chaps admiring each other's vintage BMWs. Told you it sounds irredeemably sad.

I have always regarded clubs of any sort with suspicion. Groucho Marx had the right idea. But needs must. When I bought my current car, a 1975 BMW 2002, I knew I'd need support. I have all the mechanical savvy of a mollusc. I once had to call the AA to help me remove a wheel. So embarrassed was I that I sneakily tied up my arm in a makeshift sling before the guy arrived. Alone, I'd no hope of keeping the Duchess on the road.

So I hooked up with a disparate group of beemer nuts who hold regular meets in the underground car park of a Dublin hotel. (It's not sounding any less sad, is it?) Many are veritable volcanoes of knowledge, eager to share tips and spares. Others just come for the craic. All are there because we share a deep appreciation for the art and technical genius of Bavaria's finest boffins.

Most of us drive versions of the iconic 2002, one of the greatest cars ever made. Not the quickest machine ever. Nor is it the prettiest. That honour belongs to the Citroën DS. But then, the DS drives like a car ferry.

The real attraction of the 02 is that, once properly set up, it handles like it's being borne aloft by a phalanx of angels. That said, the celestial carriers are a temperamental shower - rub them up the wrong way and they won't think twice about spinning you backwards into the nearest pole. Which, of course, is half the fun.

So, on St Patrick's day, we held a run through the Slieve Bloom mountains. Cars came from Dublin, Kildare, Belfast, Galway, Killorglin and other exotic locations to the meeting place in Portlaoise. Some came alone. Others brought better halves and offspring.

It wasn't all 2002s. There were a few 1990s beemers and a bronze mid-80s 5-Series gangster-mobile that looked like an extra from The Sweeney. One chap, Gearóid, arrived in his pristine 3.0 CSi. Beauty made flesh, it was covered in a thick film of human drool, most of it mine, within minutes. Some day, I will have one. Even if I have to sell a kidney.

We tootled in convoy at a sedate pace through the mountains to Birr. Whole villages stopped and stared as we passed. Grown men wept in envy. Women swooned. Young boys chased us excitedly. The ever-growing line of regular drivers stuck behind us leaned on their horns, appreciatively.

It was all very chilled, very civilised. Until my moment of shame. Caught short, I swung out of the line of cars and into a lay-by in the forest. "They'll keep going, I'll catch up," I thought before scuttling behind a lumber truck. To my horror, what awaited me when I re-emerged was not an empty road but a line of 16 cars, waiting patiently to offer mechanical assistance. They all stopped, thinking I'd sprung a leak. They were, in a sense, right. I was, to use the vernacular, bleedin' morto.

My shame notwithstanding, the whole day was a blast. The 02's creators would have been proud.

You drivers of modern BMWs may scoff at us as a bunch of obsessed nutters who clean their cars with toothbrushes. You may be right. But you should remember one thing - the 02 saved BMW from extinction. If it wasn't for the brilliant little cars that we honoured with our procession last weekend, you'd all be driving around in Mercs. Imagine. The horror. The horror...