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1988 BMW 325ix Touring

For proof that automobile enthusiasts often don’t make much sense, one doesn’t need to look much farther than the E30 325ix Touring. Built on exactly the same formula as yesterday’s Passat 4Motion, while enthusiasts will look upon that car generally as an overpriced oddity, pop a clean ix Touring onto their computer screen and wallets begin to fly. Understandably, there’s a style difference between the Volkswagen/Audi products and the highly sought after E30 Touring, but honestly does this car do anything appreciably better than a S4 Avant? I can only think of one thing – it generates income for the seller:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1988 BMW 325ix Touring on eBay

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Tuner Tuesday: 1986 BMW 325i Koenig Specials Widebody

Far, far on the other end of the tuning spectrum from the Dinan M5 of this morning are the ‘all show, no go’ scene cars. Built to resemble wildly flared racers, cars from manufacturers like DP Motorsports, Gemballa and Strosek are at best polarizing cars. At worst, they’re like the plot line to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex; kill your father, marry your mother and have your sister-daughters, then stab your eyes out and live in a cave. But the Rex himself must certainly be defined as Walter Koenig, with his widebody, Testarossa-straked creations. While usually we see Mercedes-Benz and Porsche versions of Koenig modified cars, today we get a rare glimpse of what he’d do to a E30. And, only a glimpse…

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1986 BMW 325i Koenig Specials on eBay

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1991 BMW 318is

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Who doesn’t love a clean E30 on a Friday evening? This 318is is well-traveled but “mechanically perfect” thanks to a thorough owner (now seller). It doesn’t look like a low-mile car but it looks good, with the classic red and Shadowline combo complemented by purposeful (if dorifty) bronze rims. The interior clearly shows this car is almost to the double-century, but recovered seats would make it nearly perfect. The 318is lacks the silky inline-6 but gets the most modern powerplant in the E30 family, the eager 130hp M42 inline-4 and even nimbler handling than the 325is. Clean ones are indeed hard to come by, and this one is well done.

Click for details: 1991 BMW 318is on eBay

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1988 BMW M3

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We may no longer be able to day dream about owning an E30 M3, but we can at least take a moment to pause and reflect that we’ve been observers of one of the most insane rises in values ever. According to Hagerty, over the last 5 years Councours and Excellent values have increased fivefold, while Good and Fair values have merely tripled. If you took $20k out of the stock market in 2011 and bought a nice E30 M3, your money would have performed over 10 times better than staying with Dow Jones. And that’s during the period of huge economic recovery – DJIA was barely 12,000 at the beginning of 2011.

(E30 M3 Values – Concours, Excellent, Good, Fair)
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(Below, the black line is the DJIA)
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With that in mind, we must accept that even extremely high-mileage E30 M3s like this 1988 Hennarot example are reaching $40k. It spent almost all of its life with an older woman in SoCal, being well cared for with a high quality repaint in 2009. The current seller is just the second owner and has allegedly owned over 60 BMWs, including 2 other E30 M3s. His fiancée is making him get rid of it (but he’s keeping the new M6, 1M, and 330i ZHP…). It doesn’t sound like money is an issue here and I’m sure the $38.5k asking price is more than he bought it for. But even if E30 M3 appreciation slows down, wouldn’t it still be worth it to pay for a storage garage and let it make you money?

Click for details: 1988 BMW M3 on eBay

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1989 BMW 325i Touring

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More wagons! Longroof E30s are popping up regularly these days, with quite a few in right hand drive configuration. They’re ending all up over the place in terms of price, but overall it seems like the relative glut of Tourings is creating a buyers market where the patient can get what they want.

This 325i isn’t the nicest we’ve seen, with a shredded drivers seat soiling an otherwise decent interior. The exterior is nice in Delphin Gray and lowered on H&Rs over some middling aftermarket wheels. It has just 125k miles, but almost no real details from the seller. The automatic is a bummer but seems to be the more common option on these wagons. We’ve seen them go from $4k to over $10k; can this one get off the ground with its $7,500 starting bid?

Click for details: 1989 BMW 325i Touring on eBay

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