E30 325i Rag-Top

Where’s the love it to bits button for this beauty..?😍

step brothers?? Half brothers..?

Not a good time to be trying to sell their week-end toys. Where costs are starting to bite quite a few people are looking to cash up the toys.

Unfortunately the flip side of this is that there are very few buyers looking for those toys so the market is very flat.

Anyone that does have a little cash is in a great position to get something nice for a good price.

This is very tempting for the wife to join the 130i cool kids crew!

Wowsers!! 

Needed a car with a tow-bar on it to pick up some new garden furniture on a trailer. Only car currently with a tow-bar the wife’s mighty E87 116d manual!

Using that in rush hour Akl traffic was not fun, crawling along between red lights. 
I must have got old and become used to “easy” driving.

@musccoo needs a price as per forum rules.

I think I might need to get one of those, old one is worn out and wrinkly.

Personally I don’t think it’s the oil prices making freight and shipping so expensive, the logistics industry lost billions of dollars during COVID and is looking to get some of that back quickly (same for lots of other industries).

Air freight has come back to less stupid levels as more airlines are flying again, but see freight and shipping is still stretched and charging big $$$

Source and buy local.. on no, wait a sec.

Nailed it!

Yes, big bucks, but then that is a 2002 based version of the Baur rather than Graham’s E30 based version. Not sure which would be most desirable.

The issue with paint “codes” is that there can often be variations over the lifetime of the colours and there is then effectively a number of colours you have to choose from.

Are all your parts made from the same material? Some paints come up different when they are sprayed on steel, or plastic or even different plastics.

Even trying to match to another part of the car can be problematic, a lot of matching skills have been lost with the advent of mixing machines, and the human eye is a lot more accurate than even the best machines.

If you’re not happy then you are quite within your rights to take your car to the painter and have a discussion about it and see what they suggest.

On 10/24/2023 at 9:00 PM, Young Thrash Driver said:

Spotted in Putaruru on Monday. A Ford Ranger with full "Coombes Johnson BMW and Mini" livery 😂

This one… 

It’s the parts & service dept work truck, because BMW don’t do utes, unlike some other “premium” car manufacturers.

A couple of tricks and tips I was given for bleeding an M20…

1. Make sure the hole under the bleed screw on the thermostat is clear.. this often gets blocked and then doesn’t bleed the air.

2. To get air out of some of the odd places in the cooling system it can help to have the front of the car jacked up so it’s sitting on an angle. 
 

Good luck, it can be a real pain to get all the air out and stop it blowing all the coolant out the expansion tank.

17 hours ago, Apex said:

 I'm sure the conversation over bumper air vents at the Porsche meeting would be equally punishing though. 

It was a bit of a rivet-counter comment, but I makes me wonder about the part used and for a $200k car, you’d want it to be correct!

Like Dan I’ve never been big on 911s, probably from being scared silly by the 70s oversteer versions.

On 10/25/2023 at 1:22 PM, Neil McCauley said:

Just me or did the Evo 1 have much more appeal when it was an honest unrestored example rather than having half the classic parts catalogue thrown at it?

I get what you mean, it’s a bit of an odd one being quite so “restored” and clean’n’shiny. There’s a couple of little details that are slightly off - the number plates look flat not pressed and the front bumper upper centre intakes are covered. Non-original bumper?

With E30 tax plus M3 tax, could easily be looking at $100k on restoration, hard to tell what has been cleaned and put back rather than replaced.

As for E30s being slow, especially up against other $200k cars, that is very true but the speed is not the reason I love an E30. You can only do 100km/h in NZ, and much over that you should really be on a track.

Saved the planet, one km at a time for approx 900kms, and sneered at all the farmers in their dirty diesel utes spewing smoke.

Yeah, it seems to be one gets put up with a healthy asking price (not getting into whether they are realistic or not at this point) and that lures a couple of others out of the woodwork.

I am 99% sure that the Evo 1 was up for sale for ages, but looks to have been restored and now back up again.

One things for sure, I am well out of the E30 M3 market now. 🥲

Have you got a towbar on that? I’ve got one in the garage if you’re interested. 
Great photos and I do love a wagon.

Hope the insurance give you a decent price for it and don’t fob you off with “market value” BS.

If the brand new tyres are “Supercat” then you’re probably better off throwing them away.

49 minutes ago, overly__under__engineered said:

other brands do 300k+ when driven into the ground. BMW does 100k. no more. hahahaha.  Come on. Jokes aside, BMW is clearly garbage compared to any other brand. 

Plenty of BMWs out there with well over 300k, some with a lot more here in NZ.

Not sure what you’re trying to achieve with that last comment, but it could come across badly on a BMW enthusiast forum.

TradeMe $1 reserve auction for an M-Tech I lip spoiler (needing paint) has just finished with the winning bid at $700! Wow.

I thought it would be a few hundy, but crikey. Need to wrap mine in cotton wool now I know what it’s worth.