Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
I had to do a double take when I saw this 1995 BMW 840Ci for sale in California, as Carter had featured a strikingly similar example at the end of last month. Sure enough, this Oxford Green Metallic 840Ci is a different car altogether, but one which has almost 80,000 less miles. With the lower running costs of the V8 engine over the V12 and such low mileage, this could be one of the ultimate 8 series opportunities that we’ve come across here at GCFSB.
It seems we often list multiple cars from the same seller; in some cases, that’s simply because they have the best examples that are available. EAG and Sloan Cars are great examples of this, amongst many. However, there’s a second tier of cars that we feature – eye candy that lies abroad and would be more difficult to procure. Such is the case with dealers like 4Star in England who seemingly has an endless supply of incredible examples of cars we all want. I think, however, that we need to add “ExoticCarsJapan” to the list, since this is now the third successive Alpina and fourth BMW I’ve written up from them. However, unlike the two previous E28 5-series B9s, today’s example is quite a rare example – a 1982 C1 2.3 E21:
Though personally invested, I’m still skeptical of the recent prices we’ve seen E28 M5s being listed for. It seems like reasonable examples were going for high teens just a few months ago, yet all of a sudden it seems any clean sub-150k mile example is going for over $30k. Today’s example is one of the rare Canadian models with the all-black interior, which is a fun idea but much less appealing (to my eyes at least) than the tan interiors present on the other 99%. It has just 124k miles and appears to be in good working order, but it’s not like the shockingly clean examples we’ve featured recently. It’s lived through 4 owners and the maintenance history is disappointingly lacking. The E28 community seems to express a collective “meh” when black-interior cars are brought up, but some like the color and rarity. Have E28 M5 prices really gone up 100% over the last year?
I’ve made several references comparing the BMW 8 series to a few Ferraris, suggesting that it was perhaps a budget alternative to running a 456GT, for example. However, the E31 isn’t the only Ferrari-esque design to come from Munich; in many aspects, the E9 coupe shared some visual DNA with the Ferrari 330 2+2 from the 1960s. Now, for some that may sound like heresy and I can appreciate that; but take off the Rosso-colored glasses for a moment and look at the side profile of a 330 GT versus the E9 coupe; it’s nearly identical. The rear end treatment was quite similar as well, and while the grill on the BMW was obviously quite different the two even shared a quad-headlight setup. Obviously, underneath the Ferrari had that wonderful Colombo V12 versus the rather pedestrian inline-6 in the BMW; but pound for pound the BMW punched hard, especially in CSi trim. With 200 horsepower on tap it was certainly no slouch, especially in the midst of the oil crisis which neutered most V8s in America. It would take another two generations for the Big Three to break back into the 200 horsepower realm with nearly double the displacement of the E9. But the E9 wasn’t about straight line performance; it was a whole package – a speedy grand touring coupe with luxurious appointments and gorgeous looks:
Atlantis Blue. It’s probably a color that at least one person – probably many – at BMW hate. Why? Well, it was the color that was involved with perhaps one of the biggest PR mistakes in the automotive world in 2013. It was in that year that a BMW enthusiast had saved up to finally special order a new M3 from BMW’s Individual program in the shade. However, somewhere along the way the order was translated incorrectly and the M3 was produced in the Individual shade of Atlantic Blue. Predictably, the enthusiast (who, incidentally, had flown to Germany for European delivery of his prized M3) was immediately not pleased that the presented M3 was in the wrong shade. Complicating the matter was that BMW had ended the E92 production line, so no new M3s could be built to replace the incorrectly-colored car. The fora lit up with punters on both sides flinging insults at this enthusiast and each other; perhaps it was a perfect example of a first-world problem as some claimed, but personally I don’t think I would have accepted the car, either.
Regardless of your opinion on the outcome of the situation, the story instantly popped into my head when I saw this 1976 2002 that was repainted in the shade the above described buyer wanted – the beautiful shade of Atlantis Blue, which replaced the car’s original Fjord Blue:
