Kees

Haha I bet! That would be great! That's my 540i, has been off the road for a couple months waiting for a windscreen moulding to arrive from Germany. New glass hopefully goes in today which I'm very excited about.

Wow! That 540 touring with a manual is probably the ultimate all round car imo. Just a tiny bit jealous 😅 What a cool pair to have!

I drove the W8 and my auto 540i back to back yesterday and I couldn't help but think how amazing a 6 speed in my e34 540i would be! Would love to get one but they are so good no one wants to sell them! I love E34s, a manual 540 would be one of my ultimate cars.

Is a very interesting sound. Engine revs in such a linear fashion too. Is very very bassey at low rpms almost like a Subaru but it doesn’t throb it has a constant hum. Becomes quite raspy as you rev it out. Redlines at just over 6K. I have an exhaust clip from when I showed my mate the car:

There’s a black one I saw with the plate VUUUU8, may have been that one? Quite a clever plate I reckon. Yeah there’s certainly a list of things to fail like timing chains etc. Also, a lot of easy jobs are so much harder thanks to the W8 design. I wonder how many times the engine has been out of my car 😂

Yeah I have the feeling its going to be very hit or miss. The guy did seem like a really nice person though, he was very honest about the car's flaws when I first enquired about it. He had an e32 735i, a DS Safari as well as a manual E28 with a 2.8L in it sitting on M-Contours and with E34 leather sports seats. I complemented the wheels and he asked me how much I thought they were worth which made him drop his jaw as he only paid $300 for the whole car! We got along really well I thought, I think he was happy I was super chill about the car breaking down as I thought it would make for a cool story, plus it was a bit of fun to help him fix it. Got to have a decent look under the car too!

Yeah that’s fair enough I think occasionally the fear of impending disaster will keep me up at night with that car. Most crack-pipe era VAG cars are like that. Was petrified everyday I would walk out to my S8 that it would be slumped in one corner with failed air suspension, or the timing chains for the V10 would fail. The car has had a decent bit of work done. The seller is a euro mechanic and owns his own mechanic shop so did all the work himself. I believe he got the car as part of a deal as it had been sitting with a blown clutch. He did the clutch, clutch master cylinder, fuel pump and filter as well as engine mounts in the 18 months he had it. I’m going to have it serviced soon as he can’t remember when he did the oil last. Oil looks ok but the coolant is very grotty and old so it definitely needs a flush ASAP. From what I’ve read if you service them regularly they can be alright, although only time will tell. Dumb stuff like o2 sensors are an engine out job on these…

I saw a V10 TDI Phaeton a while ago for 7.5K. So tempting… also so much to go wrong but yolo I guess 🤣

Economy was pretty average. My 540i I have had as low as 9.8L/100km which I thought was pretty decent considering its done almost 400,000km. I was hoping to get under 10L/100km but the lowest I got was 10.5L/100km according to the car. The car has a few quirks and features being an early 2000s VAG product. One of its nice features is the fuel gauge doesn't work so the fear of running out of petrol was also on my mind 😂 I didn't fill it up completely in Wellington as I was hoping to score some cheaper 95, but it was around $3.40 the whole way up so I didn't get a chance to work the fuel economy out myself as I was hanging out for some cheap fuel the whole way up but I didn't find any. Been driving it round today and the economy has jumped up to 15.5L/100km, and its probably going to get worse because I'm addicted to how it sounds lol

I decided to empty out my spastic car collection about a month ago, getting rid of my S8, S6 and GTB E-Tune. All three cars were interesting but the S8 was the only one I really liked, largely due to how insanely engineered it was, and of course the V10 thunder it produced. All three were automatics so were quite plain to drive. Since I have my E34 540i which is also automatic, the others had to go (insurance was also an absolute fortune, $6K a year for the three I sold which is rather unsustainable lol). My initial plan was to somewhat detox from the high power, yet largely mundane automatic sedans and get something quite the opposite that would complement my 540i. What I really wanted was a manual Z3, especially after coming across the photos of my Grandfather's manual 2.2 Z3 he had in the early 2000s. I was thinking; manual, light, roof down, straight six, hmmm that sounds like a-lot of fun. In the depths of Facebook marketplace I found a rougher manual 2.0L Z3 for sale about 15 minutes from my house. The car looked like it had solid bones and was just suffering from some cosmetic flaws like clear coat peel on the boot-lid, missing interior trim, typical Z3 split seats etc which are easily rectifiable. Went and looked at it and was pretty put off not only by its condition in person, but also the way it drove. To be fair, I think that car specifically was just a bit of an underpowered dog that really, really needed some decent mechanical work done. Even the alignment was horrific, and was one of many things the owner hadn't "bothered" to sort. Feeling a bit disappointed I returned to trademe. I randomly decided to do a random search of a minimum 3.5L engine capacity and a manual transmission. I scroll through the various clapped Commodores when I stumble across a W8 Passat. I roll my eyes, here's another clown who has listed their W8 Passat Auto as a manual. (It's important to note: when I was younger I was fanatical about the W8 Passats. I have no idea why. I would always have a look at them for sale every few months but had only ever seen one manual one) I open the listing expecting to see people grilling the seller in the comments for listing it incorrectly. The first comment read something along the lines of "Can I please come view, I have an Automatic one, have been looking for a manual". I immediately go look at the photos. I scroll through the 3 photos of the car and see it is in-fact the super rare 6 speed manual. That's very cool I thought. I texted the seller to ask some questions and for some more photos. I got a response but never got sent any photos. I then couldn't find it on trademe so just assumed someone else had snagged it. Fast forward 3 weeks and I get a random text one morning asking if I'm still interested in the Passat. I replied and the seller sent me a walk around video of the car. He then filmed a short video of him driving it. As soon as I heard the W8 rumble I was very, very interested. I texted him heaps of questions (as W8s are not quite known for their reliability) and after a couple days made him a sight un-seen offer I thought was fair. We made a deal and I flew down to Wellington yesterday to go get it. The day started out a little less than ideal. About 2 minutes into the test drive I go to put the car in neutral from 2nd gear as we pull up to some lights and it shifted funny. I then go to release the clutch and the clutch is still sitting on the floor. Oh sh#$. We push the car to the side of the road where we see it dripping some fluids. Without a clutch we weren't going far. The owner and I decided the best thing to do would be to try drive the car to his workshop as it seemed some kind of line or hose had popped off. We push the car down the street in neutral and then jam it in second and set off to Lower Hutt. We get the car on a hoist and indeed a hose connected to the clutch master cylinder had disconnected thanks to a clip that had somehow wiggled its way back. The seller got everything connected up and then we bled the clutch so we could do test drive attempt 2. Car did well on the test drive, and although my confidence wasn't particularly high, I knew I probably wouldn't find another car like it for the price, so I bought it anyway. I then began the journey home trying to make as few shifts as possible incase a similar thing happened again. I cruised mostly in 5th as I could go through towns and on the open road in the same gear. Everything was going smoothly until I realised I hadn't been listening to the GPS and was in Whanganui. I started driving State Highway 4 out of Whanganui which I found to be an amazing road that was nice and twisty! It's just not that enjoyable when you have no phone service and you are petrified you are going to have no clutch because of all the gear changes you are making to go around the hairpins! The car however continued to do really well and eventually I made it home. Was really impressed by how comfy and quiet it was at higher speeds, despite the car having some decent exhaust work done to it. The steering has a good weight to it and the car handles nicely. Not sure how many people will be interested in it but thought I would do a little write up and post a few photos. Its a car many people forget but I think its quite cool. Factory recaros, factory BBS wheels, unique engine and a 6 speed manual! From what I can find out online, I think my car may be 1 of 4 W8 Manuals left in NZ. It needs a really decent detail which I will hopefully start in the next few days. Only posting a few photos as the car is looking a bit grubby at the moment.

I'm just waiting for the day the Government introduces some arbitrary registration system based off something like engine displacement, where you pay more for registration the bigger your engine is. Can see something like that happening very soon.

The news this morning has had me looking at frugal diesels for longer trips. I have access to a Smart Fortwo for around town activities which it handles superbly. However, on the open road you do feel a bit vulnerable in a Smart car, especially with the quality bumpy roads which make it hop and shift around the road like a grass hopper. Wish I had bought the manual 320D touring that was for sale a few weeks ago! Can't seem to find many decent modern(ish) manual diesels for under $7K. Have noticed the price of hybrids and electric cars going up too. I remember when BMW i3s could be had for under $30K. Now the cheapest is a little over $30K... I'm about to buy a battery charger because I can see my 540i getting minimal use this year. Last year it wouldn't sit for more than two weeks ever, and was usually driven a couple times a week (as it is stored away in a garage away from my house so I would swap cars and keep it for the weekend). I did over 5000km in it which I thought was pretty solid considering the lockdowns and what not. I also wonder what ramifications of the petrol prices will be seen in the car market. My guess is that really desirable and rare stuff (i.e manual 911s, e39 M5s etc) will remain at their current prices or continue to appreciate, but more common stuff like W204 C63s which had been regularly seen doing daily duties in the past, will soon flood the market as people can't afford to run them, and don't see the value in having them as a weekend toy. I think people may also think twice about buying a weekend car as they struggle to pay for fuel in their daily drivers. Although on that vein of thought; desirable weekend toys like M3s etc. may become more desirable as more people switch to super mundane daily drivers like Leafs etc and subsequently crave a really special and engaging machine for the weekends. In which case your average daily driver that isn't particularly fuel efficient will potentially be worthless. Only time will tell though! Without getting too political it doesn't take a genius to understand that minimum wage rising is just going to boost inflation further. Costs of production will increase for firms that are already on their knees, and of course that extra cost will be largely passed onto the consumer. It does not take a genius to interpret that minimum wage rising is going to hurt low income earners more than benefit them! I would not be surprised if we have protests very soon pertaining to the cost of necessities because it genuinely is out of control. Let's just say I'm counting down the days until the next election.

That is true, even that second example that was for sale with 140,000km had a strange "startup noise". I'm sure a couple E39 M5s and E46 M3s have racked up some higher ks, and they might even be the best ones to get as they've clearly had work done to them for them to rack up the ks. Surely there's a 300,000km e39 M5 in someone's shed...

Here it is! Every time I see it I just get annoyed lol. Its great how when I didn't have the money, cars like this were 20K. Fast forward 2 years when I could start to justify $20-30K on a special car like an e39 M5, B7 RS4, E46 M3 etc, and I'm completely priced out of the market. I have a folder on my computer dedicated to cars I have spotted for sale which I think were bargains. That M5 is part of it! If anyone knows of a super high ks/less pampered "cheap" E39 M5 (i.e less than $40K), please let me know 😂

BMP885 for the second one, the first one was AMT897 and within that listing there were photos of another seemingly identical Le Mans Blue car with the plate ACU598, all three cars having around 140,000km! The fact that two e39 M5s were on trademe within a week of each other is mind blowing. Last one I remember seeing on Trademe was an Oxford Green one at the end of 2020 (YD1500 I believe).

Very true, was around $170 to list my S8 on trademe! Ludicrous

Put my S6 on trademe 3 days ago and its sold already. Can't see myself using Marketplace again in a hurry. So far, every car I have sold in the last year, the buyer found it on trademe. It's just a shame trademe is starting to be plagued by time wasters. Genuinely cannot fathom why people bother to organise things like a viewing or inspection and never contact you again.

I second this. From my experience with Turners they have a habit of changing critical auction information just before an auction.... Currently its stated as registered but you would need to double check during the auction to ensure they haven't just magically decided to de-register the car.

That one is already on my Turners watchlist… 👀 No WOF since 2020 which is rather odd. Random panel damage too. You would think it was stolen/recovered but it isn’t listed as such. Hasn’t done many ks too

This one? https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/wrecked-cars/listing/3268500009?bof=FPDzf4bj I think BM World got an imported one, I remember there were two black M6s both with front end damage for sale within a couple weeks of each other. What are the chances!

You’re welcome to buy my project 5.2L V10 S6 I had as a backup parts car for my S8 that I recently sold. $4K and she’s yours 🤣 M5 does seem like an amazing buy. Must be a pretty incredible car when it was put up against an F430 by Jeremy Clarkson. Supercar with 4 doors. If I wasn’t in isolation I would seriously consider that silver one.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/eurocarclassifiedsnz/permalink/1802950939895801/?sale_post_id=1802950939895801 Interior is quite nice, is the spec I would want with the aluminium panels.

Saw this on marketplace. Rod bearings done, full service history and it’s NZ New so doesn’t have the marmite interior trim that plagues a lot of the imported ones. Higher ks at over 200,000 though.

I would just like to add to the numerous rants pertaining to selling an item on Facebook Marketplace. So I recently listed for sale my 2006 Audi S8 V10 on Trademe (I actually sold it last weekend), and along with it I also listed my 2006 Audi S6 V10 on Facebook Marketplace. I had bought the S6 on a whim for three reasons; it was cheap, had thousands in receipts, and would be some temporary fun. The car has a suspected blown head-gasket. When I went and looked at it there was some oil in the coolant but it wasn't overheating and it was running fine, no bubbles in expansion tank and no milky residue in oil, so I bought it. Drove it over an hour home, bombed around in it for a few days, noticed it was using heaps of coolant and then saw milky residue was starting to form on the oil cap. No worries, the car was primarily bought because it has had a brand new intake manifold costing $4.7K just for the part and new injectors which were over $2K along with a stack of other work such as new high pressure fuel pump seals etc. Along with this its got all the S6 goodies like bucket seats, big brakes, carbon fibre interior trim, bose audio etc etc. If anything happened to the S8 my plan was to take whatever bits I wanted off the S6 and then part out the rest and probably make most of my money back, if not turn a profit. But since I was selling my S8 it made sense to get rid of the S6 which was sitting out on the road doing nothing and I couldn't be bothered parting it out, so onto Facebook Marketplace it went with a price of $4.4K (just wanted what I paid for it which was $4K). Bare in mind the car still runs and drives, has WOF and Rego and is 100% complete, so can either be fixed, at which point its probably worth around 13K or could be parted out for heaps of $$$ too. Well naturally because its cheap I got over 60 messages about it. At least half are the typical "Is this still available", to which I reply and then get left on seen. - I've had at least 5 people pledge to buy the car and then ghost me/not turn up. The most recent example offered to send me a deposit to secure the car, to which I stupidly replied saying "we can just sort this all in one go when you come to collect it", and fast forward 2 days and he does a no show, even though we had discussed loading the car onto his trailer etc etc. - I have one unlikeable individual who messages me daily offering 2.5K and asking when he can come collect it; like bro I can take 2 things off this car and sell them for more than you are offering, and anyway with an attitude like that, I would rather give away the car than sell it to you. - I've been offered countless trades. An E65 730D (which honestly looked quite nice)... until I was told it has an air suspension levelling fault, manual Suzuki Swift, NZ New E39 530i M Sport + 1K (was actually very tempted by that one), a tuned 1.8T Audi A3.... with no wof and reg, Mazda 6... but DIY painted orange and with a massive rear wing etc etc. - But what takes the cake for the best trade I have been offered was a straight swap for a de-registered Dodge Caliber needing a clutch master cylinder. Like yeah what a great deal, maybe if you throw in 5K my way I will consider... To add some salt to the wound the car decided to snap its bonnet latch the other day so I can't even run it for long because I can't put coolant in it, so my original plan of putting some headgasket stop leak in and seeing how many minutes/hours/days/weeks of added fun I can get can't be done. Spent 3 hours trying to sort it but you really need an inspection camera to sort it and I don't want to spend any money on this car lol. So at this point I'm so fed up with them all I almost have enough motivation to start parting the car out just to prove a point, especially when I have people requesting parts off it already... until I remember that I will have to deal with people like this when I'm selling parts for it. Heaps of money to be made though with the gearbox, intake manifold, injectors, ignition coils, cats, wheels, bucket seats, HID lights etc. Hell even the block would be worth some money for someone to make a coffee table out of! But can I be bothered? Thats the real question. But anyway, vent over.

Yeah I reckon and they will probably get $60K for it too!