Tom GriscomCar and Driver
From the June 2021 issue of Car and Driver.
Somewhere near the Lake Murray Dam in South Carolina, I squint out the windshield and try to decipher a road sign on the other side of the intersection. Traffic rolls past on Highway 6, and it occurs to me: I’m squinting because the sun is in my face. It’s morning. The sun rises in the east, and therefore if I want to go north toward the dam, I’ll take a left. About a minute later, I’m at the dam, one of the checkpoints on a fiendish scavenger hunt. You wouldn’t think a dam—or anything else, for that matter—would be hard to find, but I’m hewing to a single rule that, not so long ago, applied to everyone: I can’t use GPS. I’m rediscovering my sense of direction in a 1987 BMW 325is, and among many startling realizations is that it’s easier to navigate early in the morning or near dusk. When the sun’s near the horizon, you might not know where you are, but at least you’ll know where you’re going.
Tom GriscomCar and Driver
I bought my first GPS, a TomTom, in 2006. That purchase marked the beginning of the end for my innate navigational abilities, a set of skills honed from childhood until the moment I outsourced part of my brain to a small computer suction-cupped to my windshield. Now I fire up Waze even when I know where I’m going, ostensibly for information on traffic and cops but really because I no longer trust my own instincts. When I hear about people whose navigation system routed them into a lake, I don’t judge. If Waze told me to hang a left down a boat ramp, I’d probably be like, “There must be a good reason for this lake shortcut.” Burble burble, glug glug.
To find out whether I can regain my bearings, print director Eric Tingwall handed me a list of locations in South Carolina and gave me two days to find them without help from Google and the satellites floating over our heads. My steed in this project, period correct in the extreme, is a gray 325is out of BMW’s collection stashed near the Spartanburg factory. It’s a driver in extremely fine fettle with a few old-car foibles. Most notably, the odometer doesn’t work. I don’t think BMW is too concerned about the resale-value implications of that little flaw, but it does reduce my distance calculations to dead reckoning. Ahoy! Can somebody tell me if this is the Bahamas or Asia?
My first stop is a gas station, where a guy at the opposite pump immediately offers to buy the 325is. “Just those center caps on the wheels go for $75 each on eBay,” he says. It’s reassuring to know I can start selling off pieces of the car if this conceit goes too far awry. But for now, on to my first waypoint: a ZF transmission plant at 2846 North Old Laurens Road, Gray Court, South Carolina. If I can find a map.
I stop at multiple gas stations in search of one. Eventually, at the Laurens town line, a cashier scrounges up a laminated map of South Carolina and a big folding paper map of the East Coast. She has to ask the manager how to ring them up because they’re not in the computer anymore. “I should just give them to you,” she says, then doesn’t.
Tom GriscomCar and Driver
Armed with these new tools, I proceed to get lost for an hour. As I soon learn, if I have a 50-50 chance of driving in the correct direction, I will go the wrong way. Eventually, after much backtracking and one more stop to ask for directions, I spy a small sign pointing to a side road off the main drag: ZF Transmissions. One challenge down, eight to go.
Now I’m heading for Columbia and the day’s remaining destinations: Riverbanks Zoo and Garden, a dessert place, the world’s largest fire hydrant, the Cocky statue on the University of South Carolina campus, and the Hootie & the Blowfish Monument. My gas-station maps make no references to Mr. Darius Rucker.
It would be easy to hop on Interstate 26 and blaze on down to Columbia, but in the spirit of moving at a slower pace, I decide to follow U.S. 76, a two-lane. This promptly creates its own miasma of confusion, as the signs on U.S. 76 that point toward Columbia actually direct me to I-26, regardless of whether that’s in the opposite direction. Fool me once, signs for Columbia, shame on me. Then fool me a bunch more times, too, because I can’t figure out which way is south.
U.S. 76 meanders through the town of Irmo, where I’m greeted by signs bragging of the Okra Strut. I have no idea what that is, and since I’m staying true to my 1987 bubble, I resign myself to not knowing. Pre-smartphone, you’d see a sign about the Okra Strut and wonder if that was maybe a suspension part made of plants, and then you’d forget about it because you also didn’t know where you were or what time it was, really, or where you might stay or eat if and when you got to where you hoped to go. It’s frustrating, not knowing, but it’s also liberating: Questions can go unanswered.
I overshoot my target, the zoo, and end up northeast of downtown. Now on urban surface streets, I realize that short-term memory is another brain function I’ve outsourced to my phone. I’ll need to stop every few miles, or even blocks, because there’s no way I can memorize more than three turns at once. Luckily, I blunder past the huge fire hydrant purely by accident. I’ll end up finding everything on the day’s list except the Hootie monument. There’s another thing we used to do: give up.
The next morning takes me back north, toward Clemson, and after I traverse the Lake Murray Dam, I figure I’ve earned the right to some highway miles. On I-26, the 325is easily keeps pace with traffic doing 90 mph, its hearty 2.5-liter inline-six happy to hum along in the high reaches of the tachometer. I employ a speeding strategy I honed during my formative Camaro years: find someone crazier than me, then hang back far enough to see whether they hit the tripwire of a speed trap. I wish I had my old Fuzzbuster.
Tom GriscomCar and Driver
I’m heading to a bakery near Clemson, then on up to Highway 107 to get the 325is on some fun roads. It’s more driving than yesterday, but now I’m feeling confident, tuned in to my surroundings. When I notice Clemson stickers on cars, I figure I’m getting close. But the 50-50 rule comes into play, and when a right turn would immediately take me to the Pound Cake Man Bakery, I instead go left and lose the trail. Once again, I boldly and angrily give up and continue out of town, north toward the mountains. I need corners more than cookies.
I find the road I’m hunting for 24 miles outside Clemson. Falling Waters Scenic Byway runs to the North Carolina border in a series of corners perfect for an E30-chassis BMW—third gear, one after another, climbing toward the Smokies. The little 14-inch tires howl as the door handles angle toward the pavement, providing quality drama at a pace that would bore a modern M4. Most of us love old cars precisely because of this earnest tactility, the low-stakes fun of exaggerated speed. But if you want the full throwback experience, add the frisson of seat-of-the-pants navigation. Getting lost used to be a purely bad feeling. Now it’s exhilarating.
Back at BMW’s visitors center, I trade the 325is for its spiritual heir, a 2021 M2 CS. My drive home is three and a half hours. I reflexively fire up Waze—and then turn it off. I’m pretty sure I can find my way back the same way I got here. And if I don’t, I’ll just keep driving.
Illustration by Chris PhilpotCar and Driver
