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Over the past couple months, we’ve featured a few E34 and E39 540i sedans with the M-Sport package. While the E34 540i M-Sport was an extremely limited edition model that was akin to the late model M5 we didn’t get, the E39 540i M-Sport was kind of an M5-light. You were down about 100 horsepower versus the M5, but if you wanted a sporty V8 5 series with an automatic, this was your only ticket. Thankfully, this Dinan tuned 540i M-Sport for sale from our reader Hunter is equipped with the 6-speed manual, giving the new owner a lot of the same pleasures of the infamous super sedan from this era.
We’ve given the E39 touring a lot of love here at GCFSB, but the E34 is a classic, handsome longroof that would still serve the purposes of a family man who likes a little old-fashioned German luxury. Today’s black-on-tan example looks pretty darn good for a 20 year-old car, having covered roughly 5k miles per year. It may not be the sportiest of BMW wagons, coming with the 4-speed auto mated to the 2.5-liter M20, but it’s a great hauler that is a step up from the ubiquitous Volvo 240 alternative.
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?
The 1990s were a watershed decade for BMW. So many great cars emerged from Munich during this period, among them the last of the E30 M3s, the brutish V12 powered 850CSi and, towards the end of the decade, the beautifully unique M Coupe. Of course, there are so many others models that passed us by during this decade. One of which was the car we see here for sale in Minnesota, the E34 540i M-Sport. The E34 M5 would bow out of the US market in 1993, leaving a hole in the lineup for a fast 5. Enter the 540i M-Sport, which was similar in spec to the European market M5, but with a 4.0 liter V8 under the hood mated to either a 6-speed manual as we see here, or a 5-speed automatic. Only 200 of these special E34s would be sold, leaving a car like this, with under 50,000 miles in desirable Alpine White over black leather, a rare treat indeed.
