Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The E28 M5 is seemingly following in the E30 M3’s footsteps as the next hot commodity in the semi-vintage BMW game. If you want a lot of the M5 look at a discount, a 535i such as this is the next best thing. We featured this car back in November of last year and it is back up for sale at no reserve with a few hundred miles more on the clock.
There are some pretty distinct tuning periods, such that you can generally peg the time frame that a car was modified if it was “cutting edge”. For example, when I saw this 2002Ti pop up on eBay, I immediately thought it was a late 80s/early 90s modification. Most of that, to be fair, came from the dated wheels, but the boxy styling, attempt to update the grill and paint scheme just said to me that M.C. Hammer may have been playing in the background when this car was revised. And like early modified cars and even more recent examples, dated mods sometimes make a bit of a mess – and this car certainly looks dated to me. Despite that I think there’s still a lot to like here; the base is a clean 2002Ti, the box-flares aren’t horrible and inside there are some great Recaros and a Zender wheel. What would you do with the rest?
I’d like to think that Paul Bracq winces a bit every time he sees one of his beautiful creations saddled with what the government deemed necessary to survive a 5 m.p.h. impact. It’s rather ironic, seeing as how today most cars can’t even rub up against another without deforming the plastic bumper covers. But back in the 1980s, the solution to the problem wasn’t aerodynamic, well integrated covers – no, as if to say “that’s not a real regulation, is it?” to the government, manufacturers went overboard. They adopted massive impact bumpers for U.S. markets, many extending improbably far from the body lines of the car. The E12 was a perfect example of this; of course, take a BMW from the 1970s, take the bumpers off and drive it at something and you’ll quickly learn what will hit first – the hood. The chiseled looks Bracq refined were great though, almost good enough to overlook the saddling of U.S. safety equipment. In many ways, I prefer the simplicity of the E12 to the refined E28; to me, the early car is prettier, a 5 series with some of the best parts of the 6 series design incorporated. But there were many drawbacks besides the look of the bumpers for E12s in the U.S. market. Most notably, the pre-catalyst engine used thermal reactors and air pumps to help superheat the exhaust to burn off pollutants – remember, these cars were delivered when leaded gasoline was still around, meaning catalytic converters would quickly be clogged. However, the thermal reactors wreaked their own havoc with the M30, sometimes resulting in warping the head. Coupled with diminished performance and a propensity to rust, it’s therefore become rare to find good condition E12s still floating around today – but there are two for sale on Ebay right now:
To me it’s always a bit interesting to talk about people’s motivations in getting a particular car, especially so when that car is a classic. For example, consider my Audi GT versus a Quattro. These days, if you can find one a mint condition Audi GT will set you back around $6,000 – $8,000 for the very best examples we’ve seen. However, that amount may get you a wreck of a Quattro, but likely not a particularly drivable example. In terms of driving experience, the GT is out of the box 90% of the Ur-Quattro experience for 90% plus of the time. Brought to a show, many non-Audi folks could probably not tell them apart. Yet, in terms of value gap, the iconic Quattro far outstrips the classic GT. We see it in other areas, too – for example a 73 911S versus a 77 911S, a E28 535is versus a M5, or even a 325is versus an M3. If you’re smart with your money, choosing the lesser example may not get you the headlines, but stretching your budget to get into a less serviceable iconic car is not likely to bring you more happiness, only more headaches. Take the two 2002s we have here; a freshly rebuilt, ready to roll 2002Tii and a somewhat tired, restoration ready 2002 Turbo:
It’s always fun to see what the creative engineers can come up with out there. The guys at CG Motorsports clearly wanted to show their building skills, so they went a roundabout way of making an E36 DTM-style M3 tribute, albeit in show/street-car guise. I will admit to a guilty love of wide-bodies, though this love is confusingly matched with a distaste for wings and overdone wheels. These guys took the basic-but-capable 318is and stuck M3 bits all over, including some body parts, suspension, transmission, and engine. Add a DTM-style widebody kit, and you’ve got a tuner’s show car! They’re selling it in a way that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth – offering the chassis and body alone, or with all of the running gear and additions – that just makes me scratch my head harder. Taste and selling tactics aside, it is a clean FrankenBimmer that, at least to me, has some potential.