The Surprising E30

Last week, I wrote about going to Santa Fe to visit our middle boy and entertaining dreams of snagging some cool southwestern rust-free car. Well, I did. But it happened after I got home. On Tuesday morning, I reset the default location of my Facebook Marketplace search from Santa Fe back to Boston, and saw this short ad:

“1988 BMW 325is. 5 speed transmission. Runs perfect. Needs some paint work. Car is solid with no rust. Vehicle has a Salvage Rebuild Title. Why I don’t know.” The photography was as short as the description, with just a handful of cell phone pics.

Looks promising, right?

The interior looked tired, with a worn-out bolster on the driver’s seat, but it clearly showed sport seats and a sport steering wheel.

I can live with that.

And, the kickers: The car had a stated 88,000 miles on it and had been priced at $8500, but the seller just lowered it to five grand. And it was in Averill Park NY, between Albany and the MA-NY border and a quick 2 1/2-hour jaunt out the Mass Pike.

Well then.

I messaged the seller and expressed no-nonsense interest. He sent me the VIN, and I ran the CarFax. It showed the salvage / rebuilt title issued in CT 1992 at 23,000 miles, that the car had a single owner (him) since 2002, and that the annual state inspections backed up the almost unbelievable claim that the car had 88,000 miles.

Then I ran the VIN through mdecoder.com. I’m not an E30 fanboy, but my understanding is that the 325is was never a separate model as far as BMW was concerned; it was a bunch of options packaged together and marketed through BMW NA as the 325is. The options on this one included S708 (M sports leather steering wheel), S481 (sport seats), S209 (25% differential lock), S226 (sports suspension settings), and S324 (front and rear spoilers). My understanding is that makes it a 325is, or close enough to it for government work. It all looked good enough to trigger a phone call.

The seller said that the car had been traded into a Ford dealership where he worked as a service technician. He’d driven the car up until two years ago when other projects took precedence, but he said that two months ago he jump-started it and drove it to the parking lot of a friend’s body shop where it was currently sitting. I asked about the “no rust” claim (like the mileage, nearly unbelievable, especially for a life-long New England car). He said that he’d had it up on the lift at the body shop and found literally zero holes. He told me that the clear coat was peeling in a few places, and a branch of small tree had dented the roof, but that the car looked pretty decent and ran well.

In addition, the seller and I hit it off as two plain-talking honest car guys. “Just so you know,” he said, “the price is firm.” I said that five grand seemed fair if the car was as he described, I don’t bargain for sport, I’d show up with cash and a trailer, and as long as there wasn’t something big like a cracked head, the odds were strong that I’d buy it.

It was now Tuesday evening. I was prepared to line up a U-Haul auto transporter for the morning and shoot out there, but the logistics of him getting to his friend’s body shop during working hours was challenging. He asked if I could wait until Saturday. I was concerned that the car would be gone by then, and offered to PayPal him a small non-refundable deposit to essentially by my place in line (I’ve done this a few times and it usually works pretty well). He waved it off, saying that I didn’t seem like a time-waster, and he would hold it for me ’till the weekend.

Let me back up a few steps. I like E30s, but I’m not a fan boy. I owned several of them back in the day when they were ten-year-old daily drivers. I never bought into the whole “God’s chariot” thing or the idea that they and E28s were the last BMWs designed for 300,000-mile service lifetimes. I liked the E36 325i that I owned after the E30s much better. (E30 purists can now burn me in effigy.) However, I completely agree that, with time and distance, they’re great-looking small BMWs, the poster child of those golden late 1980s when BMW could do no wrong. And that zingy 168-hp M20 engine sits in a spot between the 2002’s torque-bereft M10 engine and the several varieties of big six M30 and M50 engines.

Long-time readers will recall that I towed a very nice very original nearly rust-free Zinnoberrot red ’87 325is home from central Vermont back in 2014. I’d recognized the upward tick in E30 values, and admit that I bought the car mainly to make money. I paid four grand for it, held onto it for about 2 1/2 years, gave it what it needed (including re-dying the front seats, which generated the memorable articles), and sold it in early 2017 when I lost my job, bought Louie the ’72 2002tii (the Ran When Parked car), and needed to maintain the illusion of financial propriety. I got eight grand for it, which at the time was eye-popping (many folks commented “You mean that’s what you need to pay for a pretty 325is these days?”). I thought I did great. Of course, E30’s upward momentum continued, and within a few months, it was clear that I’d sold it too early. That didn’t really matter—I needed the money. But I’ve wanted another E30, so in the ensuing years, I’ve kept my eye out and occasionally looked at local cars, trying to buy back in. But in the sub-$5,000 range, I’ve found only rusty New England junk. When a car appreciates, I find it nearly impossible to recalibrate my sights and pay close to market value. I tend to instead look at other models. Can’t get an E30 anymore for five grand? Buy an E46 330Ci. A better car in every way. Except, of course, that it’s not an E30. So the lure that I might be able to tow home an E30 that, coincidentally, looked remarkably similar to the one I regretted selling was of intense interest.

The very-similar-looking ’87 325is I sold back in 2017.

So on Saturday morning, I hooked a U-Haul auto transporter to the Armada’s trailer hitch, uttered the traditional incantation “May the automotive powers that be have mercy on my Hack Mechanic soul,” and headed west. As I got off the Mass Pike, it began to rain. Then, as I threaded my way through the hills to Averill Park, the skies opened. Great, I thought; I forgot my raincoat, my umbrella, and my Tyvek suit. I’m really going to enjoy laying in the mud to look at the car’s undercarriage. Fortunately, by the time I pulled into the parking lot of the body shop, it had lessened to an annoying drizzle. It wasn’t enough to soak me, but enough to make me very efficient in what I was doing.

I’ve certainly driven a few hours only to spend 30 seconds looking at a car, mutter “Well that was a complete waste of time,” get back in the car, and drive home. That was not the case here, but I’m not sure I’ve ever spent less time looking at a car that I wound up buying. The seller already had the car started and running off a jump. I walked around it, sized it up, pulled the rubberized rear mat out of the back of the Armada, and used it to lay in the mud left right fore and aft while I looked at the lower fenders, rockers, floor pans, and frame rails. The muffler was surprisingly quiet considering that its outer skin was yawning open like a half-eaten artichoke, but as far as body sheet metal, found just one eraser-sized bit of corrosion that would like go through if I poked it. That was it for rust. The seller had accurately described the car.

I verified there wasn’t oil in the coolant and vice versa, then disconnected the jumper cables and drove the car for maybe 30 seconds around the muddy parking lot. There were no nasty metallic sounds from the drivetrain, the clutch and brakes worked fine, and there wasn’t a cloud of oil smoke behind it. Other than badly needing tires and feeling like the front struts were gone, it was pretty good. The trunk stank of mouse urine, but the tired-looking interior appeared to have been spared the olfactory onslaught.

Yeah, I’m not going further than around the block on those.

I closed the door, walked over to the seller, and said “Sold!” I counted out the cash, he signed the title, we wrote up a bill of sale, I loaded the car on the trailer, and drove home. It was the quickest bag, tag, and drag I’ve ever done.

Score.

But you know the truly remarkable thing? I looked at the date stamps on the photos of the previous red ’87 325is when I bought it, and, incredibly, they’re August 3rd, 2014—10 years ago to the day.

Two Zinnebarrot E30s, bagged exactly a decade apart.

As with any project car, we’ll see what it really is and what it really needs. Obviously I’ll do the timing belt and a fluids change. I suspect that an inspection will reveal it needs every rubber boot and coolant and fuel hose replaced. And, of course, the reason it was given a salvage title 32 years ago may rear its ugly head.

Ick. But you have to love the detail of the bungee cord holding back an improperly-fitting radiator hose from hitting the fan.

But a running, driving, essentially rust-free ’88 325is for five grand? Ten years to the day after buying my last one? Man, when I said “May the automotive powers that be have mercy on my Hack Mechanic soul,” I didn’t realize that the incantation had actual power.

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