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1993 BMW 740iL

1993 BMW 740iL

Published September 2, 2016 by Craig

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Consider this the latest in my series of “nowadays it’s really hard to find an early 90s BMW that hasn’t been trashed, but this one looks good” posts. I’ve always really admired the E32, the iteration of the 7-series built between 1986 and 1994. The very definition of a stealthy, executive express, it’s a big body car that dates from an era of BMW styling which combined angular lines, conservative, teutonic good looks and classic BMW cues like the wide kidney grille and four-lamp headlights. In many ways these cars look a lot like the E34, the 5-series of the same era, just bigger and brawnier.

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1985 BMW 745i

1985 BMW 745i

Published August 27, 2016 by Craig

4The E23 7-series is already a bit special, for two main reasons. First, as I mentioned when I wrote up a 733i a couple of weeks ago, you don’t tend to see them on the roads anymore. Second, the beautiful design, which shares a number of features with the shark-nosed E24 6-series coupe, matches anything put out by Mercedes-Benz in the same era in terms of elegance and style. That is not something that could always be said about BMW products, even if they were more fun to drive than their counterparts from Stuttgart. But this E23 is even more special, since it’s a gray market 745i.  Not available in the US, this high-performance model represented the top of the E23 lineup in Europe and came with a turbocharged version of the 3.4 liter inline six cylinder M30 engine (here called the M106) and a host of luxurious and high-tech (for the time) accessories. Very few of these come onto the market, and rarely do they do so in the kind of condition shown here.

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1993 BMW 325iS

1993 BMW 325iS

Published August 26, 2016 by Craig

1Time capsule cars are fascinating. It doesn’t matter whether they’re high-performance exotics or run of the mill, entry level econoboxes, there’s always something deeply weird and alluring about finding a car built decades ago that still looks brand new today. It’s even more interesting when that car is an E36. This generation of 3-series will, I think, one day be regarded as a classic, but you’d be forgiven for doubting it, since so many of them out there for sale today are such dogs. For every nice example on the market there are ten cars that have been driven hard and put away wet. This ’93 325iS however looks pretty much the same as I imagine it did the day it left the showroom, which is not too surprising since it only has 34k miles on the odometer.

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1991 BMW 535i 5-speed

1991 BMW 535i 5-speed

Published August 25, 2016 by Craig

3A 535i with a manual transmission is probably the third most desirable version of the E34 5-series, after the M5 and the 540i/540i M-Sport. These cars came with the 3.5 liter “big six” M30 engine (technically a 3.4 liter mill) and represented the top of the non-M lineup until they were replaced in 1993 by the V8-powered 540i. While manual 540s are a hoot if you can find them, they are not without their faults (somewhat thirsty, and susceptible to the nikasil issue, in which the sulphur content of 90s era gasoline had the tendency to eat away at the nikasil lining of the block, requiring a replacement engine). The six-cylinder manual 535 on the other hand, which is perhaps even harder to find than a manual transmission 540, is torquey, smooth, reliable and fun to drive while returning decent fuel economy.

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1985 Mercedes-Benz 300SD

1985 Mercedes-Benz 300SD

Published August 19, 2016 by Craig

2Another day, another old diesel Benz. I know, I know. But when I saw this one I couldn’t resist. Yesterday I wrote up an ‘87 300SDL. While that car presented very nicely, in truth the better W126 diesels are either the early, short wheelbase models (’81-’85), like today’s car, or the very late ones (’90-’91), during which time the short and long wheelbase diesels shared the same engines. As noted yesterday, the diesel motors in the cars in the period in between had a few design faults that could potentially affect their longevity (quite unusual for a Mercedes product). This particular car is an ’85, the last year in which you’d find the legendary OM617 engine under the hood.

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