Awesome day out today at the Sydney VW/Audi (VAG!) Dyno Day in Revesby. My full write-up on the day can be found at Zen Garage.

The car that got away.

A few days ago I put a bid down on a BMW E36 318is (that lowercase “s” makes all the difference) on eBay. Not that I need a 3rd car but it was one of those spare of the moment, late at night, red wine and internet moments!

I’ve never bought a car off eBay before but in this case I doubt the seller had ever sold a car on eBay before! Her listing was awesome (view it here), you could read her frustration. Poor lady must have been hammered with stupid questions, low ball offers and hate mail!

I was winning the auction until someone sniped me last minute and beat me by a measly $50. I was pretty devastated for some reason! At $4k I would happily have paid $5k for the car.

This morning I’m still feeling shitty about it. An E36 might still be on the cards, would make a nice project car for Zen Garage I think. Lovely lines, always have loved the shape more than the ‘little too boxy’ E30’s or the ‘tubby’ E46’s.

As much as I love collecting stickers I hate sticking them on anything. When I do stick a sticker on a car I end up hating it, then ripping it off soon after. I figure under the bonnet is a good out of sight, out of mind way to represent!

So many awesome things in the mail this week!

Before we settled on the name “Zen Garage” we had registered “Us vs Them” only to find out that the name was already being used in the US as an automotive/lifestyle fashion brand. It’s almost impossible to get .com domain names these days, everything is taken, most of it’s parked too which adds insult to injury.

After a quick google search it turns out Zen Garage was also taken. Len Higa from Oni motorworks, along with Giant Robot magazine had a show at the Japanese American National Museum in December last year. The show featured the SUPER FAMICOM CAR, a retro video game-inspired converted Scion xB utilizes projectors from both the front and rear to play video games. DAVID CHOE’S CUSTOM MONSTER SCION xB and SHINYA KIMURA’S SPIKE motorcycle.

Not wanting to start Zen Garage on a negative I thought I’d send Len an email, stating that we were about to launch a new business called “Zen Garage”. I suppose I was looking for his blessings? The next day I got an email from Len, who was excited, positive and more than happy to give us his blessings! The guy is a champ, he’s even sent me a Zen Garage T-Shirt (Len did the insanely awesome tyre/enso illustration), one of the remaining few left over from the show which ended last January.