Bit of trial and error, but it all turned out lovely in the end. Sander simply dialled a mate to tow him home, installed a new set of bags and this time fitted an electric valve regulator. Everything broke.” But this is all part of the fun, isn’t it?īeing a trailblazer isn’t easy. Which was a mistake, as it turned out, as the bags then fouled the wheels and split open. “After a bit of fabrication I got it all installed and working properly, and the acid test was to get out and try to drive it as low as possible. “I first set about finding some appropriate air-bags, and then sourced some valves I thought would work well,” he says (slightly manically, but all the more endearing for it). Thankfully, Sander relishes this kind of thing, like a mad scientist after a boozy lunch. So the only realistic option was to fabricate a bespoke system. This lust plunged him headfirst into the adventure he so yearned for right from the get-go, as air-ride is a), quite expensive to buy, and b), not readily available for the E30 Touring. Sander coveted that air-ride, he wanted it for himself. And inspiration for the first alteration came From his brother – or, more specifically, his brother’s car, a bagged Passat. Someone who would rather create his own bow wave in the scene than bob and eddy in the turbulence of others. It’s immediately obvious that this is a man with vision. After a week of tinkering I had it running like clockwork – so the adventure could begin…” “It did start easily enough though, with a new battery and some fresh fluids. “The car wasn’t running, I had to drag it out of there,” he recalls. He could see the potential, and in the twinkling of an eye Sander was set up to get out there and reframe the local population’s perceptions of who you could expect to see behind the wheel of a 3-Series estate. Explains a few things.) “I took a look and liked what I saw, so I made an offer and a few days later it was accepted.” So, as a seasoned car enthusiast at the tender age of 21, who’s previously stanced a bunch of Golfs and restored a Mini, why did Sander by himself a wagon? “The Touring was brought into my work by a customer who was looking to get rid of it,” he explains. This is clearly not a man who bought an estate car so he could cart the lawn trimmings about or take advantage of the offers on home furnishings at Habitat. And secondly… well, just look at the bloody thing. First of all, it’s a BMW, which means it’s not an estate – it’s a Touring. He’s the owner of this particular car, you see, and there are two important elements in his sphere of experience which exempt him from having annoying refuse-based badinage with terrible musicians. Well, unless you’re Sander Op’t Root, that is. Unwarranted quizzing from average rappers aside, this kind of endeavour is all just part of life when you own an estate car. No, I’m not taking your food waste bin, it reeks.” Is that a box of glass to be recycled? Yeah, I can take that for you. So the natural answer to give the Black Eyed Peas is: “Oh, I’m just off to the tip. “Whatcha gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?” We’re not totally sure what the Black Eyed Peas were branding on about in the bafflingly cretinous My Humps song, but we can only assume they were addressing an acquaintance who’d been deeply entrenched in the painstaking task of clearing out the loft, sorting and pruning and expunging until the boot of their car was full of superfluous items from their past. This blisteringly green station wagon is just bristling with Oriental violence, fusing Asian malevolence with good oldfashioned European insanity…
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