Old BMW fanciers thread

[hennabm]

I've just scrapped a 90 320. The tin worm had munched through the sunroof drain pipes leading to lots of water entering the cabin. It had also eaten the sills, under the sill covers and the final straw was the NSR spring mount rotted out. 

Still, it's turning out to be a nice little earner and someone kindly took away the shell for free. 

I hadn't done badly out of it. Bought it 14 years ago for £70.

[hennabm]

BTW, the 323 came in 139 or 150bhp flavours. It had rear discs and 51mm struts.
The 320 had drum rear brakes, unless specified with ABS.

[DavidB]

Nearly as bad as that £2500 one

[HMC]

These are proper money now aren’t they. I’m a bit bloody minded and hence simply won’t pay the money that is asked for a decent one. It feels a very long time ago that @RobT offered a 325i  “coupe” (the classic tax version of a 2 door saloon) for £not much. Plus that had been specially blessed by a mystic of some sort IIRC.

[RobT]

15 minutes ago, HMC said:

It feels a very long time ago that @RobT offered a 325i  “coupe” (the classic tax version of a 2 door saloon) for £not much. Plus that had been specially blessed by a mystic of some sort IIRC.

2012 and I paid £650.  Makes the mind boggle, doesn't it.  It was pretty much rust free too.

Found this calling card stuffed in the engine bay...

[DodgyBastard]

I essentially got this for nothing having done a couple of swaps for it. I sold it to a mate for £400 in 2015, thinking about it I still kick myself because even back then it was worth a couple of grand.

[DodgyBastard]

Someone I work with gave me this for nothing, it was a 735 auto with a rotten fuel tank. I sold it to a dodgy BMW breaker who used to be on here.

[DodgyBastard]

2016 I bought this for £900, sold it on eBay the following year for £1400.

[DodgyBastard]

The third car I ever owned was an E30 325i touring. I bought it in 2010 for £900. I have fond memories of it.

[DodgyBastard]

I bought this in 2019 for £700, it was a decent enough old car but couldn't really justify spending thousands on one.

 

[Marina door handles]

My first love when it comes to the Bavarian marque is the E28,  still miss my old 528i, what a machine.....  what a lot of rust.... What a knackered gearbox too!

[dave j]

That roof looks nasty! 

I bought a 318i once for a pint of lager! It was rotten but for £2.25 it was OK... Sold it on for £50 after doing nothing atall to it. Mind you that was about 15 years ago

[sierraman]

3 hours ago, hennabm said:

I've just scrapped a 90 320. The tin worm had munched through the sunroof drain pipes leading to lots of water entering the cabin. It had also eaten the sills, under the sill covers and the final straw was the NSR spring mount rotted out. 

Still, it's turning out to be a nice little earner and someone kindly took away the shell for free. 

I hadn't done badly out of it. Bought it 14 years ago for £70.

Sometimes when the body is bollocksed like that it’s time to let the good bits keep the better ones going. Of course people with short arms and deep pockets come out the woodwork and say you should fix it up but you can’t save ‘em all. 

A good mate of mine had an 85’ B plate 325i 2 door. Really nice car back in its day but we’re talking when you could pick a rough but ready one for a couple of hundred. We went out to an 80’s themed house party in it and some yuppie offered him £500 on the spot for it, which seems absurdly cheap now but at the time he’d paid like £150 for it. It was one of those motors that looked brilliant until you opened the boot and saw the holes or started it up and heard the camshaft rattling like Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. 

[JJ0063]

Bought my 2dr non sunroof 318i in Nov 20 for £2800 IIRC.

 

Fantastic car and I have plans to keep it as long as I can, I barely drive it and it’s hidden away but I enjoy knowing I own it. 
 

main thing I’ve learnt about E30’s is that if you think you’ve found a rust free one, you just haven’t found the rust yet. 
 

I need to get my inner rear arches/inside the boot welded on mine but I need to save some money first. 

[DavidB]

5 hours ago, Matty said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bmw-e30-325i-/194177157057?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286

Worth a risk?

That looks fantastic - the originally-a-316 puts me off though, for my own snobbish reasons.

[Bear]

What counts as 'old'?

[Matty]

That rear panel by the look of it

[Vince70]

I sold my immaculate 68000 mile rust free example E36 cabriolet for £1200 last summer now I’m really regretting it  and even the interior was like new  and every option box had been ticked but I guess you can’t keep them all.

But I did keep my mint compact Ti.

 

[motorpunk]

No pics, but I bought an E30 325i two door for £400, garage find, needed nothing but wipers for an MOT, took it to the ring and killed it on a banger rally, it then went for scrap. Feel a bit bad about that, now.

My youngest (owner of @SmokinWaffle’s old Panda) is a bit of a petrolhead and is hankering for an E30. She needs a licence first...

[Matty]

I do like them compacts. A 2.5 ti would be a very nice thing I reckon

[TheOtherStu]

See, where does one find an E30 estate in usable state?

The classic car lot seem to buy them for thousands now. People talking about £300, no chance once the eBay vultures get to them. Our dog needs a car. The Missus Panda is great and all, but you can't really go camping in a Panda with the dog. Now i'm about to get over 50 (and strangely, not far away from Mr Cheap Insurance over in Oxford), insurance isn't really an issue for buying silly cars with big engines.

I keep seeing E46 estate with that lovely 3 litre diesel engine on Autotrader for shirt buttons, but they always sound (and looking at MOTs look) like they need to be followed around with a dustpan and brush.

I'm going to swear now. Would an early Audi A4 estate be a better buy, what with them being proper galvanised and that?

[Tadhg Tiogar]

2 hours ago, TheOtherStu said:

See, where does one find an E30 estate in usable state?

The classic car lot seem to buy them for thousands now....

They also spend thousands sticking bigger M30 engines into them.

[TheOtherStu]

11 hours ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

They also spend thousands sticking bigger M30 engines into them.

Ah ok, knew there had to be something. What do they lend themselves to? The modern 3 litre engines?

I mean, it's not like I'm trying to buy an M3. 325 or 328 would be ideal

[Tadhg Tiogar]

6 hours ago, TheOtherStu said:

Ah ok, knew there had to be something. What do they lend themselves to? The modern 3 litre engines?

The modern 3-ltr ones I'm not familiar with, but there was a lengthy period where it became a thing to graft the M30 2.8/3.4/3.5 litre into any E30 that would take it. Quite a few E28s and E32s died as a result. 

[DavidB]

I just got offered a two coupe 320, has been off the road for 4 years with no MOT for £6200,

I think these may be 'worth it', until you turn up and find 'odd marks on bodywork' is rusting from the inside out.

 

Also this 320 auto, which does look tidy and "It’s fully restored" but it's "I think around 7k".

[sierraman]

£7,000 for a 320 auto full of wob? 

[Dave_Q]

Fun fact, when I had an E30 I had a set of those rank 17" reps, I failed to sell them for £40 and weighed them in.

[seacow]

Had my 316i for nearly 10 years now - 67k and i am the second owner.  I really enjoy driving it - not fast  but great fun.  There are a couple of 316 on the bay at the moment headed to 10k - thats too much.  Mine was valued at 6500 for the insurance.  I keep looking at more modern 3s and 5s - as love an old beemer.  Would get a 6 cylinder on a second one.

[sierraman]

These are making mad money, just been looking at them, the absolute pariah of every BMW dealer a 316 auto 4 door in beige is up at £8k. 

‘The ultimate driving experience’

[HMC]

Is it m3 values that’s pushing them up? I remember having a look around a £6.5k m3 in about 2006. That seems to be what a 316 is valued at now.