E30 325i Rag-Top

That was easy, here it is from the Pistonheads site... Works out quite a bit cheaper, less than NZ$25k before shipping, but worth the money? Still a no from me. It's a very good condition car, but I'm not sure there are many collectors that are that interested in a 330d sedan and if they were surely they would be after the TU2 version with the 203bhp and the six speed gearbox from the last of the production?

There's a lot of these popping up all over now, they basically take the listings from a dealer in another country, run the selling price through a currency converter and then put that on the local site. If you look on TradeMe there are a few cars listed that are showing as "overseas listing" that are using this method. I e-mailed one guy to ask if his price was correct for a used demo as it was more than the RRP of an NZ new one, and he explained it was a Japanese listing and that was what it would cost. By the time the original 330d from this post has been converted from GBP into JPY and then into NZD it works out crazy expensive. If we could find the original listing from the Uk site it would probably work out a lotcheaper.

Euro4 emissions level is the lowest you can bring in, which this version of the 330d doesn’t meet. So you would need to wait for it’s 20th Birthday in a year or so, then it’s into a different category imports wise. If it’s $30k then forget it, doesn’t make sense even before you add on the shipping costs. Strange it’s on a Japanese site, but the car is in London.?

If it wasn’t in South Island I would have jumped on it, but then I suspect so would quite a few others on here!

The one and only Ford Transit! Probably a bit bigger than what you’re looking for but you can never have enough space!

Plenty of cars I flipped when I was younger that would be worth heaps now, Mk I and II Escorts, early Cortinas and the like. Would have required a lot of work to keep them going and/or restored. Of the cars I owned the 205 GTi Pug is the one I miss, fun car with lots of happy memories. Also all the tools I sold when I left the Uk to come to NZ, as “I won’t be working on cars anymore” Ha!

Ahh, that explains why diesel was 79.7c a litre on SH1 just past Tokoroa.

Not the normal reason for doing a brake conversion, what are you looking at doing on the master cylinder and booster side?

Fun cars to drive, but sitting in the drivers seat it never felt “special” to me possibly due to the horrible plasticky dashboard and cluster from the basic Sierra models.

There’s the funny thing you see, before you can order the Euro size plate, you have to register the car to be assigned the rego number. Once you have that, you can then order a Euro sized or slimline version of the same plate. Then you wait for said plate to be made and sent to you, about ten day turn around currently I believe. In the meantime you can either sit and wait for it to arrive, or drive it with the standard plate on it.

I’ve seen a very nice red 318iS going into Pakuranga Golf Club a couple of times in the last week. Recent number plate, so could be the one that sold if previous owner kept the p-plate??

In the flesh, and with an NZ plate mounted. M-Sport front bumper and grille.. Love the rear-three quarter haunches on this car, much broader than traditional BMW coupes, very prominent in the mirrors. To me it is quite Mustang-esque in those shoulders, but not in a bad way.

M-sport models do look a lot better in the F30 shape in my opinion, good colour as well - I think the dark greys suit the M-Sport look. Good news is that this car does not have the more expensive M-Sport brake option (blue //M calipers) that was mentioned above as being expensive to update the pads. Wheels are also smaller size than most of the NZ new vehicles (18s v 19s) so tyres should be a little more costly when / if they need to be replaced, they might also be non-run flats which would be a bit cheaper again to replace. Being Jap import it has got the alcantara (man made suede) interior rather than leather, but to me it is still a nice interior and hard wearing. Buying any used car at around 100,000kms is always a bit of a gamble, even with homework and checking everything out there is still a risk as many problems can come up without any warning signs. So as Qube says, keep a bit of budget back for maintenance or problems. Plan for the worst, but hope for the best, as they say.

Welcome to the forums. Nice car, thanks for the photos, looks to be in great shape. There are a large number of fellow 130i owners that regularly contribute, and a number of detailed threads on their various cars and modifications.

Similar to E30 M3 DTM hubs, but not quite right, so I would go with STW hubs?