Probably favourite video of the year! Here in OZ I have a 2007 E81 130iLE manual as a daily and rate it highly. To put that in context it follows a long term 996 GT3, M2, 2006 Z4 coupe manual, E46 M3 coupe manual. All sold now and worth many times the 130i but, the smiles are nearly as good for fractional outlay. What a fantastic road trip! Visited NZ twice to do the Targa NZ years ago and the roads and the public's support of the event was amazing! BTW, great driving on the tracks! The 130i can be snappy in the wet with it's short wheelbase especially without an LSD. Would suggest you skip to gold and explore a Cayman S manual if you can. IMO the S2000 is way over priced now and frustrating to drive. I bought one new and sold it after 5000km. Alternatively, a C63 AMG '08 onwards. Total brute but great value by S2000 standards. Cheers from Sydney!
Hey mate, cool video, always fun driving these hot hatches I call pocket rockets on South Island scenic roads. Can I ask you, is that rear spoiler original or you bought it after market? Looks amazing. I have got same car 2009 model. Cheers.
Fantastic journey in such a beautiful car. The Scenaries are mind blowing! I would love to visit New Zealand one day. How many km does your 130i have now?
Very interesting! Owning a more reasonable F20 120i, I would love to trash that little B48 on a trackday to properly learn to handle this rwd car, while traveling in a nice place !
Oh for Pete’s sake people just have no idea about these cars. NO it hasn’t puked oil everywhere. Hilarious to hear you mock BMW for unreliability while asking if you should buy a 30 year old Honda or RX8… The 130i will be a better drive, way more features and more reliable than both. Honda will fail WOF for rust, RX8 will lose compression.
Very Cool video, recently got myself a 2006 130i, had it's first track day 3 weeks ago and I was impressed with how a bone stock 130i went and handled. Being the Auto model it was not the fastest changes but not that bad considering, had to use a lot more brake but even with stock pads and disks NO brake fade.
Yeah I’d agree man mines been through heaps of track days and has never missed a beat, no brake fade and drives awesome. Keeps up with cars it really shouldn’t
I remember my first trip through Danseys Pass, in a brand new (at the time) Mk3 Focus RS. I can feel your pain, what I thought was going to be a fun road was a nightmare!
Beautiful scenery, but too bad to get there you have to drive for hours on campervan, truck and rental car riddled chip seal roads at 35 under the speed limit
Awesome vid mate! I have an 02 NZ 540i MSport in almost perfect condition. Still throwing lots of cash at it to have her in showroom condition. Would love you to film / drive it if you’re interested…? Keep up the awesome work!
That’s awesome man! E39’s are some of my favourite cars. I would although I’ve already reviewed an E34 540i and the video didn’t do too great that’s all
@@KiwiCarLife Does ur's have the plastic or magnesium valve cover? My F25 x3 has this engine as well, but slightly updated after the F series. I remember it is called N52N.
@@KiwiCarLife makes me sad man i fell in love with your channel because of all the honda content but keep up the good work you’ll always have my support
Really enjoyed this one. Would have loved it to be in a bit longer and seen a bit more of that beautiful scenery. If only the back seats had a bit more leg room Android teenager friendly I would have a 130i in my driveway as well.
Thanks man! Yeah I try keep my videos relatively short but will keep that in mind for next time. And yeah they’re not too practical in the back haha but it’s fine for just me and Angel
@@KiwiCarLife I second their comment about showing more, you had a great opportunity to either have a 30-45min video or even multi part 10min video's if you like to keep them short, either way it was still a good watch, keep it up & hopefully will see you at a Manfeild event one day.
@@HashDogg06 30 MINUTES the length nah I can’t do that haha. I barely took enough videos for an 8 min video, mayyybe I could have gone into more detail about and included more track footage but even so it’d still be barely more than 10-15
@@KiwiCarLife Yeah that's fair, i was leaning more towards track footage but footage of driving the roads is an added bonus. I just thought you went to town on chopping as much footage as possible to keep it short, not realizing you hadn't taking all that much video time in the first place, sorry about that.
