When you’re writing an automotive profile article about someone you’ve never met you’re always apprehensive going in, but when I e-met @NK_TiSA I knew things were cool just by looking at his virtual background, an action shot of him in his M3 tearing up the track. There’d be no worries on this ride-along. -sludgo

sludgo: Let’s start off with an easy one—your Bring a Trailer origin story.

NK_TiSA: I met Randy through a mutual friend in 2010, 2011, 2013…somewhere back there, and Bring a Trailer was just an idea in his head at that time (Ed. note: BaT came online in January 2007, so it must have been before then—time flies, don’t it?). I talked with him a little about it and said that it sounded like a great idea so when it came online I started hanging out there. That was before you could even sign in as a member, when it was basically just reviews of auctions that were going on and postings of some other car stories and things like that. But I actually bought my first racecar through a Bring a Trailer feature—a 1935 BMW that was in England.

Nice! Tell me about that.

The car was imported before the war then sat in a barn during the war and afterwards Ron Willis had it. He was a mechanic and a hotrodder at heart, and started running it in hillclimbs and progressively modifying it. Ran it in the Prescott Hillclimb every year from right after the war until the early Fifties, and did some road racing with it too—ran a Formula 2 race in Belgium. It was fun to find the elapsed times he did the hillclimb in because every time he did a modification to the car the time would get better! But, being more of an artist than a businessman, his garage eventually went under and he was forced to sell the car. It got kicked around for years and years and years. Somebody did a half-assed restoration on it along the way and it came up for auction in England in 2013 and I saw it and just fell in love with it and so I bought it.

Vintage-raced it for a lot of years but then my wife got worried, since when I ran it everything north of my hip-bone was exposed and completely unprotected. She told me she thought we should rethink this thing a little bit and I sold it.

Where did it go?

It’s down in the Georgia area now living the life of Riley. Doesn’t get raced anymore but goes to a lot of shows. I’ve always tried to find good homes for my cars when I sell them. All my cars have a good history—one of the things that attracts me to them in the first place—but I feel like I’m just a temporary caretaker for them, and one of my responsibilities when I hand them off is to make sure they go to another qualified caretaker. So far I’ve been successful doing that with the cars I’ve sold.

Inquiring minds want to know. Explain your screen name, NK_TiSA.

The NK stands for the Neue Klasse, which was the four-door BMWs that came out in the mid-sixties and really propelled the company forward. And the Ti/SAs were really special. They were homologation specials and they only made 200 of them. Mine was number 193. They had a five-speed gearbox, a different suspension and shock package, and were the only car to come from the factory with twin side-draft Webers. It was the first sedan to go around the Nürburgring in under nine minutes. They were dominant in the mid-sixties in the sedan classes in Europe and won at the 24 hours of Spa in ’65, I believe.

The same minds will want to know if there are any more of your rides crossing the block soon?

Actually this fall I’m going to be selling three cars—my three prizes—my CSL, the E30 M3 Group A car, and a Group 5 2002 with the M12. It’s going to be hard, but it’s time. That CSL has a heck of a story.

Do tell.

I named it “Luigi” after the late Luigi Cimarosti, who after the war went from Italy up to Belgium, set up a shop, and started fixing and repairing road and racing cars. He was pretty successful hillclimbing Fiats but then got a 2002 when they first came out and won the Belgian Touring Car championship with it right out of the box. And when the E9s came out—the CS—he started racing those. He won the 24 hours of Spa in ’74 and ’75 outright. Then in ’76 they changed the Group 2 rules so the cars had to be more like street cars (that’s why mine has those little funky fender flares). The factory was coming over to the US to run IMSA with their CSLs so they sent two Motorsports tubs to Luigi and told him to have at it.

Those two cars dominated that season, and my car was the Championship winning car! After that season it got sold to Martino Finotto who was a well-known Italian driver and who campaigned it the following year. Then it was sold to a privateer who ran it in the Italian Touring Car series until 1981, then it just sat until the guy I bought it from found it in the mid-’90s and had it restored back to Motorsports livery. He raced it in Italy until the early 2000s when he retired and I bought it in 2013. We did a full restoration back to its ’76 livery. It arrived in January and we raced it in April! Jim Froula did an incredible job on it. He’s really good. But I just turned 75 and the car is a lot of work to drive. I know it’s just time to let it go.

Wow, talk about having terrific provenance!

Yeah, it sure does. I mean, Hans Stück even sat in the seat and signed the dashboard for me. He was the honored driver at Amelia Island in 2016 and they invited my car down for that so I’ve got a nice picture of him with his arm around me like we’re old pals!

When did the racing bug bite?

Well, Dad started a dealership in the early ’50s in the Twin Cities selling British cars. You know, MGs and Jaguars and Allards and Morris Minors and Land Rovers. But then in ’51 or ’52 or ’53 he picked up Volkswagen, and of course that was the absolute golden ticket. When he sold that dealership in the mid-sixties it was the largest servicing Volkswagen dealership in the country. Then he became a distributor for BMW. Opened a new dealership, and he had kept Land Rover but also added Mercedes and BMW and Rover, and as soon as I was old enough I was working in the parts department and was the lot-boy cleaning cosmoline off fin-tailed Mercedes and four-door BMWs. I remember Dad was always looking for a low-priced car to get people in the door so he had Renault for a while and then Peugeot and then NSU, and those are just neat little cars—really well-engineered. That’s how I got hooked. My first race car was an NSU. It was in New York when I bought it and I lived in Minnesota then so I went out and got it then drove it home! I ice-raced and autocrossed in it for about a year and a half, and that’s what really cemented my interest in racing.

So what is it about your need for speed, Maverick?

It’s not the winning—I’m not driven to win which is probably a little unusual. It’s nice if I do, but I just enjoy the visceral feeling of driving a car as fast as I can around a track, if that makes sense. The sounds. The sights. The smell. The feedback I get through the steering wheel. That sublime connection of being one with whatever car and getting the most out of it that I can. That’s the appeal for me.

Was that NSU your first real-world car too?

No, my Dad was pretty smart. The first car he gave me off his lot was a ’59 180 diesel Mercedes which had a 0-60 mph time of about a week if you were going downhill. But it was a tank so if I got hit I’d survive. But back then I was always delivering cars to customers off of his lot. I had to deliver a BMW CS to Idaho once and at that time the speed limit in Montana was “reasonable and prudent.” When you’re nineteen, what’s reasonable and prudent?!

You’ve said you bleed BMW blue. How’d that end up happening?

Maybe it was wiping off all that cosmoline, sludge! Smelling all those fumes! But, honestly, I drove a lot of BMWs back then, delivering them to customers or knocking them around the lot and they were always so much fun to drive, and when the 2002 came out I was hooked. They were so cool to drive.

Any thoughts about the recent BMW design direction?

You mean Bucky Beaver Teeth?!! Well, to be honest, whatever BMW is doing is working because they outsold Mercedes this year again, so what are you going to say?

Let’s jump to some racing memories. Best racing moment?

Probably winning the B-sedan national championship for SVRA at COTA. There were two faster cars in front of me who battled each other until they both dropped out and I had to drive the last four or five laps with two or three cars glued to my rear bumper. Crossed the finish line with one of them up on my door handle! It was fun!

Most humiliating racing moment?

That would’ve been when my friend had an SS Chevelle with a 396 in it and he coaxed me into a drag race in that 180 diesel Mercedes. We were going to go from one stop light to the next, and he said he’d give me three-quarters of the block and he still beat me! I thought I was really going to show him and had the hammer dropped in that diesel but there was just no help there. Like flogging a dead horse. I knew when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw all that smoke coming off his rear tires I was in trouble!

Most disappointing racing moment?

When I first bought the CSL I took it from here to Nevada to a track east of Reno, unloaded it from the trailer, ran it through tech, went out for the first practice lap, made half a lap, and the clutch disintegrated in the bell housing! I loaded it back up in the trailer and drove it back home.

Finally, worst wreck?

I’ve never had a real bad wreck although I’ve done some stupid stuff. Probably the worst one was at Sonoma when I was going up into turn three. It was wet and I got the left sides just off the edge of the track into the grass and went straight up into the tires and nosed in the front of the 2002. That was probably my worst and it wasn’t very bad. I try and not stick my nose where it doesn’t belong although I’ve done exactly that a couple of times.

Shifting gears, where do you think the car hobby is headed?

I’m not sure where it’s going. I mean, a lot of the Gen-Z kids don’t even drive. It’s been interesting to me. We’re looking at a similar trend in the wine industry right now. Gen Z is drinking RedBull and hard ciders instead of wine and the Boomers are getting past drinking wine. I own a vineyard here in Oregon. Don’t make wine but I do sell the grapes so all I’m going to tell everyone is to drink lots of Oregon Pinot!

But being serious a moment, it’s interesting to me the last couple years when I’ve had both the E30 M3 and the CSL in the paddock and have watched the crowds who come and look at them. It’s the young crowds that eat up that E30 and the old guys who gravitate to the CSL. And there’s no cross-pollination! So it’s hard to say.

You mentioned you were heading to Monterey when we first chatted. Any special plans?

Well, I hope my Datsun makes it! Have you ever tried to find a cam for a 1600 Roadster?! You’re not gonna find one of those at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts! But for certain I’ll be debuting the Peter Herke 2002 I bought on Bring a Trailer last winter and that will be extra special because his daughter is going to be there.

She’s coming out from Florida just to see it. She sent me these stickers that she wants me to put on the car that say “In memory of Peter Herke” but I’m going to wait and have her stick them on instead. She was very close to him and it’ll be a fun time to have her there and see the car all redone back to the way it was in ’71.

That’s really great of you to do.

Well, like I said before, to me the stories of these cars are the important things. It’s not me owning them and racing them although I do enjoy racing them and it is fun to win once in a while but mostly I just love to get the people up close and personal to them. I always like to put kids in the seats. To me, there’s magic in those cars. There’s also a part of me says that maybe I can plant the seed and they’ll buy one of them from me someday!

Speaking of kids, any of yours looking to fill your driving shoes?

Our four kids are all adopted—two from Korea, one from Colombia, and one from India. My oldest son raced go-karts and we did that together for a number of years then he went off and did his thing. The others never showed any interest, but my second son who is just now stepping back from a very successful video production company he built recently asked me what he had to do to get a racing license! I don’t know how serious that was or if it was just conversation. Maybe he will. Who knows? It would be fun though—fun to go to the races with him and have him there next to me and watch him race. I think he’d be pretty good at it too. He’s got a good sense of motion and all that kind of stuff.

How about grandkids?

Well, I’ve got two granddaughters but they’re not really that interested in cars. Both are incredibly talented artists, though. One is at the Art Center College in Pasadena working on her Master’s and the other one is starting this fall at the University of Art in London for her Master’s. They’re brilliant young gals. Sharp and talented and really sparkly. One of them painted a couple pictures of my race cars and they’re just gorgeous. The one she did of my B16 Chevron is probably my favorite.

What’s your favorite race car of all?

Ha! That’s like asking who is your favorite kid! They all had their pluses and minuses. I really loved driving that Chevron B16. So much fun to drive. A real race car. I just wish I could’ve fit in it but I couldn’t, even with the Gurney bubble. It was made for a five-foot-ten Englishman, not a six-foot-three boy from Minnesota. My knees were up against the steering wheel and I couldn’t drive it the way it needed to be driven.

Okay, a fun question: You’ve an unlimited budget but can only buy one car. Which would it be?

An M1 Procar would be great. Just to hear it run! They switched the engines to a longitudinal orientation and tweaked that 3.5 liter up to about five hundred, five-hundred-fifty horsepower, and would spin them up to around nine grand. When they’re up there they sing the most glorious tune.

Another fun one. What’s your dream car trip?

I’d love to go back to Bonneville—to take a car there and run it. I went there for the first time in ’72 or ’73. It just kind of intrigues me. It’s the last place where somebody with brains and ingenuity—i.e. hot rodders—can win, defeating people who just have a lot of bucks. When we went it was really special. My dream had always been to build a streamliner and start with a 1000cc four-banger BMW motorcycle engine and then a 2-liter BMW M10 and then a 3-liter M30 and a 4-liter V8 with a chassis I could just switch out the motors in and go out and set records in each class, all under BMW power! Just one of those things you dream about.

Do you follow any particular series these days?

I follow Formula 1 pretty well and IMSA too, but back in the ’70s and ’80s I was a big NASCAR fan, back when the cars actually looked like something you’d recognize and the drivers had packs of cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves! The new NASCAR kids might be good but they’re just so commercially oriented. I understand they need to be but back then those drivers were interesting to me. More genuine.

F1 hero?

I like Alex Albon. He seems pretty mellow, and if you give him a decent car he can do a pretty good job. I love Alonso too of course because he’s old school. And who couldn’t love Nelson Piquet driving 1400 horsepower with all that turbo lag through Monaco! But my all-time favorite would probably be Graham Hill—a good driver and such a gentleman. Those guys were all so versatile. One weekend they’d run a Formula 1 car and the next weekend they’d be driving a sports car at Le Mans, and two weeks after that they’d be running at Indy.

Favorite underdog hero?

Alan Kulwicki. I mean, you talk about an American success story—he’s it. He did everything himself out of that little garage he had and put together friends for his team and he ended up becoming the [1992 Winston Cup—Ed.] champion—and that’s a tough series to become champion in. I just admire that, that he did it. That he pulled himself up by his bootstraps and he did it. Think of the struggles he had to face, even just to get his car to the racetrack week by week.

Silly question time. What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever hauled in your car?

A goat. At one point we decided to get some goats and the only way I had to get it home was in the backseat of my cab-and-a-half pickup. She rode back there and was happy as can be! Didn’t leave me any calling cards either which I was glad for!

And now for the musical segment of our show. What car is best to be driving when you’re listening to the Beatles?

A Z4.

The Stones?

A Z4.

The Monkees?

I don’t listen to the Monkees. How about the Byrds?

Okay, the Byrds.

That’d be my Laguna Seca Blue 2002 with the S14 in it. It’s modded and hot-rodded!

I very much enjoyed the photos you sent me. I want to hear about the yellow Porsche.

It was owned by Tom Countryman from the Nodak racing team and my dad bought it from him. The nice thing about it was that it was very straight and original. Most of those cars as they became less competitive fell down to the ranks of the amateurs and that soft aluminum front end was always the first thing to hit the guard rail! So most of them were in pretty bad shape, but when I got that one in the early ’80s it only had about 10,000 miles on it. I sold it in the mid-’80s to help pay my way through grad school and put braces on the kids’ teeth and that sort of thing, and it went back to Germany where it was completely redone and then ran in the Targa Florio for a couple years. I saw that it just sold in an auction six or eight months ago for 4.5 million bucks—that sort of made my heart stop. I got paid &70,000 for it and thought I’d put the guy to sleep! But that was a fun old car. It was licensed for the street and I drove it there once in a while.

Any future racing ahead?

I want to keep dabbling in it as long as I can, but probably just with my 2002—something that I’m quite familiar with and comfortable in. I still feel like I can do it—still have good situational awareness and my reactions are still pretty good. So we’re going to run the two CSRG races in October and that will be it for our season. As far as next season goes? We’ll see.

Well, I’ll be wishing you a quick winter and a successful return to the track next year, and when that happens, remember to keep it on the black stuff!

Will do, sludge. Will do.