It seems fairly appropriate to take a peek at a particularly vibrant shade given the holiday, and the perfect choice would of course be BMW’s Daytona Violet. Like many of the other BMW ‘Easter Egg’ colors, it’s polarizing – you either hate it or you love it. I fall firmly into the latter camp, and though for a long time I hoped to own an Avus Blue M3 coupe, I’ve since changed my mind and decided that were I ever to own an E36, it must be full of purple passion.
About a year ago I looked at a pretty nice example, which was riding the wave of E36 popularity into the $20k price range. That has not abated since, with examples trading well over that amount – a Dakar Yellow ’95 with 92k miles just sold for $33,500 plus fees, for example. Today’s Daytona coupe has just 65k miles, manual Vader sport seats, and is claimed to have a relatively fresh mechanical overhaul. What does that add up to?