I actually prefer these "Heritage" seats to the standard sports seats, and a whole lot more than the "comfort" seats. Seems to accentuate the whole luxury supercar sedan thing, esp. with the wood trim.
I've driven the Christchurch European blue e39 M5, and can confirm that the "comfort" seats fitted to that particular car do no favours in terms of looks and support. And we're not even that comfortable.
These are not comfort seats. There were 3 style of seats available with the E39 m5. Heritage leather is what appears here… vertical stitching. It was presented as a premium option and often in the day came with wood trim. The ‘Barry basic’ option available was the sports seats in ostrich pattern style leather… often came with titanium trim. These days the most popular option. The other option was comfort seats- totally different style.
this car originally had fine wood trim and being a pre LCI had a different sat nav screen and different steering wheel. Phones gone too.
It's very clear in the order process that taxes and duties at the receiving end are your responsibility. The NZ Customs website is very helpful if you take the time to consult it.
FedEx and DHL are pretty good with Duty (and IEP or whatever it's called), when it's necessary - they have streamlined processes to engage with, and are frequently in touch before it's even reached NZ - giving you opportunity to pay what's necessary and avoid any delays. UPS and NZPost - in contrast - are a complete crap-shoot.
One solution is to use a decent aggregator in US to deal with the shipping to NZ. At least you'll get free shipping from FedEx to your nominated address. That is, forget using YouShop.
I reckon it's a god-tier chassis-engine pairing. I do appreciate an original build but this looks real tastefully done, I'd probably take it over the S14 if I'm honest. If I were to nitpick anything at all about it is that they kept it LHD. Since originality got sacrificed anyway and all the effort that's gone in they might as well have converted it to RHD.
At today’s prices it would have to be a rough as Evo II needing quite a bit of work.
Non original M3s are a hard market to price, as it’s all down to personal taste.