I was going to write about driving the FrankenThirty up to Vermont with Maire Anne last weekend, but just before we left, I looked at a car that I thought I might be able to do a service to the community by alerting them to its presence. If you’re like me (and many of you are), when I see an ad for a well-priced vintage BMW that’s only 15 minutes from my house, I feel honor-bound to check it out. It’s an interesting car, but I don’t think I’m interested in buying it. Maybe one of you is. To be clear, the car is not mine, I have no affiliation with the owner, and will receive no finder’s fee if someone buys it.
The ad reads:
Rare 5-Speed E21 For Sale. Selling my ‘83 320iS 85k miles. Really solid black interior Henna Red paint (needs some work), M10 fuel injected engine with a 5-speed Getrag trans that was only offered with the S- package [RS that’s not accurate]. This car has had some parts pillaged, but what’s left is front air dam, fog lights, sunroof, stiffer front and added rear sway bars, a limited-slip diff, and factory basketweave wheels. I bought the car after sitting in someone’s lot for a while. Got it running after flushing and refinishing the fuel tanks and lines, and replacing the fuel pump and filter. Found it was leaking heavily from the accumulator, so it “runs” and will drive if it ran better. Clean title, tires have basically 0 miles on them, needs a battery and obviously you’ll need to tow it. It’s a rare spec and a great project for someone no matter what direction you want to go with it, I just don’t have the time or space to do it right now. If you’re interested come take a look and make me an offer [asking price $4500].
You can find the ad here on Facebook Marketplace.
The main thing missing in the the description is any mention of rust. While I had no particular lust for an E21, you never know what a car’s going to be and how it might speak to you unless you look, so I contacted the guy on Facebook Marketplace and arranged to have a peek.
The seller is a young man named Denton Owen, a mechanic at European Auto Solutions in Waltham, Massachusetts. I’ve driven past this place dozens of times over the decades and never knew it was there, as it’s set back a bit from Rt 117. When I pulled into the parking lot, I was surprised at the size of the building and the number of cars in the lot. Denton said that they’re mainly a Mercedes shop, but as the name implies, they work on all manner of European metal. I was particularly intrigued by the pair of E9 coupes in the parking lot without license plates, but Denton said they’re owned by customers.
A bit bigger than your corner gas station.
Denton showed me to the E21 in the parking lot. It had a nice honest feel about it. The Henna Red paint is faded and there’s a bit of finish damage to the hood, but the car struck me as a project, not a basket case. (As someone who has subjected himself to multiple basket case cars, I do know the difference.)
My kind of car?
Closeup of the hood damage. A little more than “that’ll buff out,” but nothing major.
Yup, it’s been sittin’ for a while.
Just to be absolutely clear about the “is” thing, the seller lists it as a 320is, but I have not verified that. I was able to read the VIN off the tag on the door jamb (WBAAG3306D8389454), but the VIN decoder tools I use don’t want to swallow it, so I can’t look at the options it was built with. It does not have the sport seats and steering wheel of an “is” (this is the reference to “pillaged parts” in the ad), but the cloth interior has a tidy look to it.
I like it.
Although the shift lever has a five-speed knob on it, I shifted through the pattern just to be certain. I did not crawl under the car far enough to verify whether it has the Getrag 245 with the three-piece case, or the smaller Getrag 240 with the two-piece case. The door jamb tag lists the build date as 10/1982, making it a model-year 1983 car, which reportedly has the Getrag 240.
As an certain American president said in the 1980s, “Trust, yet verify.”
A walk around the car showed rust at the bottoms of both front fenders, but nothing else jumped out at me.
The left fender wasn’t too bad.
The right one was worse.
Laying next to both sides of the car and looking underneath, the undercarriage appeared solid. I didn’t see any gaping holes in the floor pans. The frame rails didn’t appear rusted. The passenger side had slightly more than the usual amount of push-in from a history of floor-jacking. The driver’s side, though, had taken quite a beating, but the number of vintage BMWs without dented frame rails is a pretty small number.
Passenger side.
Driver’s side. Yeesh!
The engine compartment showed its age and exposure, but it appeared complete except for the battery and the air filter box, which I found in the trunk. The front shock towers had some isolated corrosion spots on them, but didn’t appear remotely rusty in any structural sense. I laughed when I saw the aftermarket horn mounted on the inner fender, part of a likely long-dormant alarm system installed back when kids at Ivy League schools referred to their 320i as “The Beamer” and when BMW stood for “Break My Window.”
Definitely not a concours winner, but not an acorn repository either.
The rear shock towers looked perfect. The trunk held not just the missing air filter box but a spare one as well, along with an extra steering wheel and other parts.
Not sure what the story was with the extra parts in the trunk.
As per the seller’s description in the ad, he said that he cleaned out the gas tank, flushed the fuel lines, replaced the pump and filter, and got the car started, but it was leaking fuel that appeared to be coming out the accumulator that’s in series with the fuel pump. The accumulator is a little spring-loaded cylinder about the size of a fuel filter that maintains fuel pressure after the engine has been shut off to aid in warm starting. I’m pretty sure it can simply be bypassed. But because I wasn’t interested in buying the car, I didn’t ask if he’d done this, nor ask to hear it run. Similarly, even though, as part of my Hack Mechanic due diligence, I wanted to take a peek in the radiator to verify that it didn’t have the blown-head-gasket milk shake in it, I couldn’t get the cap off, and let it go as I didn’t want to break anything.
If I had the car and was selling it, I’d bypass the leaky accumulator, put a battery in it, and get it to the point where it’s drivable. The owner is a mechanic and certainly knows that a running driving car is worth more than a dead one, but I certainly understand that, with multiple projects and the onset of winter around the corner, choices sometimes need to be made.
Values of old cars are a funny thing. If this was a round taillight 2002 or tii, hundreds of people would be burning rubber to this guy’s location and doing the Frye “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” thing. If it was an E30 325is, even with swapped seats and steering wheel, it would generate a fair amount of interest. But it’s an E21 320i (possibly 320is), the car that our dear departed friend Mike Miller long thought was the best value in vintage BMWs. Many road-worthy E21s have been parted out over the years because, especially in the case of “is” cars, of interest in using them as donors for organ transplants of the 5-speed, limited-slip differential, sport seats, and sport steering wheel into 2002s. Other than the bottoms of the front fenders, this one appears to be pretty solid, and I thought it had a nice feel. As the number of these cars dwindles, it would be nice if this one didn’t suffer an ignominious fate.
If have a jones for an E21 and are within towing distance of New England, this might be a good way to get into one. The seller can be contacted through this Facebook Marketplace link, or if you’re not a Facebook person, you can track down Denton Owen where he works at European Auto Solutions in Waltham MA.
(Next week: The FrankenThirty does Vermont.)
—Rob Siegel
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Rob’s newly-expanded book The Best Of The Hack Mechanic™: 40 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies (including the new Best Of) from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com/books.
