(Bloomberg) -- Our photo-and-interview series “How’d You Get That Car?” shares the stories behind classic automobiles from the collectors who not only love them but drive them, too. For these passionate owners, vintage cars aren’t just an asset class to be stored in a garage or trotted out at the next concours. Instead, they are meant to roar on the open road—and they tell the best stories about the person behind the wheel.  Click here  to read more in the series.

Rashod Bacon is not afraid of light mechanical work. The tech recruiter and longtime Venice, California, local discovered this last year after he purchased his first classic car, a 1969 BMW 1600-02. Right after Bacon picked up the boxy coupe from a dusty body shop near Lancaster, California, it broke down.

“I don’t have any regrets,” Bacon says. “But this is not the car for a money grab.” He read owners manuals and mechanic books to learn how to work it back to drivability. Later, with the help of a well-respected mechanic, he overhauled the entire vehicle, swapping out everything from the 1.6-liter, four-cylinder engine to the four-speed manual transmission to the wheels it had run on long before Bacon arrived.

A lightweight and nimble coupe, the plucky 1600 debuted in 1964 as the smaller sibling of the four-door “Neue Klasse” 1500 sedans BMW AG had been selling since 1961. A happy medium option for drivers concerned about affordability and value, the 1600 paved buyers’ paths to the more powerful 2002s, which in the late 1960s and ‘70s would earn the company its global reputation for making high-quality, fairly priced performance vehicles. Today, the 1600-02 (and 1602, as later versions were known) and its siblings are treasured for easy-to-decipher mechanics and affordable components. A 1967 BMW 1600-02 in good condition is worth roughly $30,900, according to data from Hagerty Inc.  A rarer 1968 BMW 1600 GT in good condition is worth more than $52,000.   

A talented photographer, Bacon’s Motoring While Black Instagram account celebrates some of the coolest cars in California’s bustling automotive scene. He credits the classic BMW model line as part of the inspiration for the name of his account, which he changed in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. He first became aware of the 1600’s photogenic potential—and its ability to bring together a community of enthusiasts—when he caught the bug watching some models roll together at a 2017 car show in San Diego.

“The old BMWs caught my attention and tugged at my heart right then and there,” he says. “That crescendoed into the project [my Motoring While Black brand] did with Hot Wheels in February 2023, where we had our first big Black History Month party on that scale, which put a lot of us in the same room at the same time. That's really what it's about—acknowledging that we exist, connecting the dots for people and telling our stories.” 

Our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

Read More: How’d You Get That Car? Stories Behind Classic Car Collecting

Rashod, tell me about the 1600. Were you looking specifically for something like it? 

I had been looking for many years for a vintage car on the [BMW] 02 platform. I had almost bought two or three in the past, but they either weren’t the right car for me, or they just slipped through my fingers or I didn't have the money.

I can relate.

I think I had Craigslist alerts and started to put out some feelers. I found the car on Facebook in a marketplace advertisement.

I had the cash flow, but I was actually looking at a different car. If you know the 02s well, they have two different main styles. The early cars with the round taillights and then the later cars, with the square. Anyway, I was looking at this blue one with square tail lights. And my buddy, who is a purist in this area, he's like: “I can tell that this car has a s----- respray. Don't do this one.” That forced me to continue looking. And this one came up and it was cheaper. It was a roundy. It was all original paint, and the color is what stood out to me. I had never really seen any other Florida Green cars. I paid $17,000 for it. 

When we dug into the history of it, we found that the car was actually probably manufactured in 1968 and shipped over from Germany to New York. The history is that the car sat on the lot for several months and wasn't sold in New York until 1969. So the car is titled as a ‘69. But in reality, we think the car is a very, very early ’68.

Fascinating. There’s some nuance here, sounds like. 

Mine is a 1600, but it looks the same as a 2002. The difference is really the engine. The 2002 typically refers to a 2.0 liter, whereas mine—an early car—came with a 1.6 liter, four-cylinder engine. Hence the 1600.

So anyway, the purist guys were geeked out. It's uncommon to find a car like that that has not been hacked up.

My car has all of these early little touches that are just super rare, like the way the hazard light sits on the dashboard. People were blown away. They're like, “How did you find this car? How much did you pay? Does it run?” So people started feeding me information, and that's how I started to learn about the car. 

What was your plan for the car initially? 

My intent was to have my first classic car experience. My thought was: “Before I go vintage air-cooled [Porsche], let me get the BMW and make some mistakes and not be in over my head a hundred grand”—not doing engine rebuilds for 20 grand a pop.

So how did the deal go down?  

The owner of the car was very chill, an old guy. He said he had bought the car as a project and had envisioned doing a concours restoration on it and just never got around to it.  

He cranked it for me, and I very sketchily drove it on super-old tires, very slowly around the area. You could tell that it needed a fresh battery, but it went, it stopped. The transmission worked fine. I was on FaceTime with my friend and his dad, who's a BMW expert. He told me where to pull the carpet up to look for common areas of rust issues.

We negotiated a little bit. I think they were asking for $19,000. My friend's dad and my friend said, “You shouldn't pay anything more than $15,000 or $16,000 for that car.” Walter [the seller] agreed to do some things to the car for me so that I could drive it home. So we landed on $17,000. 

I felt good about it. In retrospect—based on everything I've done on the car—I probably overpaid maybe $1,000. But I don't have any regrets.  

Of course, it broke down on the way home. 

No!

Honestly, I shouldn't have been driving the car anyway, on those tires, but I think it started to overheat. I basically coasted down the 14 for four exits.

But I'll tell you, that first 20 minutes from the body shop in Lancaster: pure bliss. I got my first classic car, my buddy’s behind me, the windows are down, the weather feels good, the car is running. 

You were flying!

It was the most beautiful, spiritual experience. It was amazing. And then I look down and the temperatures are hot. I'm like, “Oh s---.” 

We towed the car from there. And that began the journey of me having to learn the car mechanically to get it sorted, to even drive it to a mechanic. I read the entire mechanics guide. I did my own tuneup. People are going crazy, like: “You work on it yourself!? I didn't know you were a mechanic.” And I’m like, “I'm not a mechanic. I don't know what I'm doing.”

Did you grow up around car people at all?

No. But I have always been mechanically inclined. I have always been good at reading directions and putting stuff together. I used to repair my computers. My dad actually taught me that I could do that, and some of that translates into cars. I do remember getting satisfaction out of working on a computer and fixing it and being, like: “The information is out there. You can do these things.”

It's very much like classic cars. You may get stumped a couple of times, but these cars are old. There are not many electronics. There's no accessories, no power steering, no [air conditioning], it's still a naturally aspirated car. There's no turbo. 

Even with the engine that it has now, it's still a relatively simple mechanical car. There's such a big community and so much literature out there, most people could figure it out.  

So walk me through what you’ve done to it since buying it. 

I told Mano [Agulian of Manofied Cars], “I want to preserve the look of the car, but I want it to be more reliable. And I don't want my lady friend to hate being in the car.”

Cosmetically, the car is in its original state, with the exception of the wheels. Nothing underneath it is original anymore: everything from the cooling system to the engine, to the transmission, to the differential, to the suspension, to the brakes. Everything has been overhauled completely underneath the car.

How does it feel to drive these days?

Like a dream. It is everything I imagined a hot rodded vintage car would feel like. 

Originally, those cars would've had about 80 horsepower. Now, theoretically, we're pushing about 170 hp. And the car's lightweight. I'm guessing it's about 2,000 pounds.  

I'm going on a big rally in June, so right now I'm really trying to get super comfortable with the car, because the rally is a pretty aggressive rally. 

I think your Instagram account is how I first came to know and admire you— just seeing your photos of cars and car people, and then seeing you at car stuff in LA.  

The page originally started with me taking pictures of my Volkswagen GTI. It was the first time that I had bought an “enthusiast” car. I was a performing DJ in LA, and I didn't want to flood my DJ page with a bunch of car content. It was an enthusiast car, but quirky. Like it didn’t really get me any points with the ladies—or promoters. But I was so geeked out about the car, and I wanted to put the content somewhere. 

Nothing against VWs, but that does make total sense. Go on …

When you're a Black person, you're always aware of your Blackness. I'm from inner-city LA, but I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood in a wealthy town in Georgia called Alpharetta. I went to middle school and high school in Alpharetta, Georgia. My mom got a job at Coca-Cola and moved us out of the ghetto of Los Angeles and into the suburb of Atlanta.

And so, over that lengthy time period that I was out in the suburbs of Atlanta, I learned how to navigate being the only in the room. So I never actually feel super-duper uncomfortable being the only one at [local car events], even though that looks a lot different today than it did when I was getting into the scene. But I was still hyper aware of it. I noticed a void. 

And then George Floyd happened.

It was a really tough time. You know, you start to get a little money and you start to move around, and you don't ever forget about your Blackness, but it's not necessarily front and center every time. The George Floyd thing was like, “Wow, Black people still have it really tough in this country. This is crazy.”

For the first time, it was like: This car stuff is stupid. There are bigger things going on. Am I going to spend my time just posting pictures of my Volkswagen?  The paradigm shifted at that point. I realized that I have a responsibility. I need to remember where I come from. A lot of people like me, they don't make it out. Like, you don't make it out of the ghetto.  

I started looking for us in the scene. I started to toy around with names and ideas, and my buddy was like: “Why don't you call it Motoring While Black?” That got me back in touch with my Blackness during the George Floyd situation. By changing the name, I had publicly committed to what I was doing. 

It really does feel like a refutation of negativity, like something to be celebrated. 

I got tired of what I see as a void of people telling our stories: people of color, Black motoring enthusiasts. But for me, it doesn't need to necessarily be all doom and gloom. I see a lot of Black people out here having fun, and I want to connect with those people. I want other people to know who they are and that they exist. Because a lot of us are around, but we're in disparate communities. 

I pride myself on myself helping to bridge those gaps in the community.  

What do you do to recharge your own battery, so to speak? To care for yourself and bring joy and happiness into your own life?

The drive brings me joy. I live in Venice, and the fact that I can just go up the street, and people at the coffee shop know my name and talk about the car—and the local barista, who is an emerging musician, is, like: “Can I borrow the car for a music video?” And I'm like, “Hell, yeah.”

I don’t know how anybody can be in a bad mood driving up the Pacific Coast Highway with the waves crashing on the side of the highway, or being able to turn in on one of the canyons and then go up to this peak and have this sort of spiritual experience with the mountains at your back and the ocean to your front. Those are the things that charge me up. And just being really grounded in my vision. 

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