Edit: Bumping this back up to the top because it’s such a cool car, and it’s back up for sale. Eric sold it back in 2012, and it appears that Todd (the man behind Turbocharging Dynamics) bought it a couple of months ago. As a dyed-in-the-wool turbo guy, Todd knows that normally-aspirated cars don’t hold his interest very long, so he’s listing it for sale already. And at a very tempting price; $5,800. I might have to jump on this car this time around. I’ll paste the body of the new listing as a comment to my original post.
Here’s a pretty unique car, a 1984 BMW 733i with the heart of an M5. It was built and owned by one of the members on the mye28.com board, and is pretty well known (relatively) especially for surprising the crap out of people by how fast it is.
The car is pretty nondescript; looks pretty much like an older 7 series ought to look, which is part of the appeal I guess. Here’s the story from the seller:
My priorities are changing and I can’t keep so many BMWs. Unfortunately, this has to go on the chopping block.
I bought this car as a 1984 733i in 1998 with 150k miles. A couple years later I got the hare-brained idea to take this car to driving school. I was hooked and was learning my apexes, but got tired of being passed on the straights. After considering several options, I figured my best one was to drop an S38 in the darned thing. The rest is history.
The conversion was completed in 2001 when the chassis had 201k miles. The car now has nearly 290k miles. The modifications include:
* S38b35 engine (80k miles at the time of conversion)
* Euro headers
* G280 transmission (40k miles at the time of conversion)
* 4:10 big case diff with 50% LSD (rebuilt by Blanton about 7-8 years ago with new 4.10 ring and pinion from Maxmillian)
* Dinan springs
* 28mm front sway bar (stock 27mm)
* 22mm rear adjustable sway bar
* Custom valved Bilstein struts front and rear
* Recaro SRD driver’s seat
* Bav Auto front strut bar
* Short shifter (can’t remember if it’s M3 or Z3)
* Euro bumpers
* Slotted rotors with Porterfield Racing Pads
* Custom exhaust with E36M3 cats and 745i muffler (yes, it passes the CA sniff test…)I can provide either BBS RX or Style 8 wheels, both with Kumho Victoracer tires.
The car has been very reliable on the track. The only issue I’ve ever had is power steering pumps, as E23 pumps don’t seem to like regular trips to 6800 rpm. In the last few years, I’ve learned that upshifting at ~6200 (redline of the M30) not only doesn’t upset the balance of the car, it saves PS pumps.
Of course, I have driven it on the street and cross country…with street tires the car is not too harsh.
The car was repainted stock Arctic Blue in 2004 and is a bit worn. There are a couple of scrapes but the car has not been in an accident in my possession. The interior is in decent shape, the HVAC doesn’t work but the pieces are there.
I have had great fun with the car. If I had won the lottery, I would keep the car but alas such is life.
This is a difficult car to price as you can imagine. I put out about $20k to put together this car. The memories are priceless. I think a fair price is $7,500…
And now the pics:
Update: This car & the mye28.com ad were featured on Jalopnik yesterday, under the Nice Price or Crack Pipe category. The NP/CP gimmick features a car advertised for sale and asks readers to judge the car a good buy (Nice Price) or the seller to be out of his mind (Crack Pipe.) This one looks to be judged overwhelmingly the latter. The commentary in the article (and I thought Graverobber was a decent fella) and the reader comments that followed reminded me of why I don’t enjoy Jalopnik much these days. It was encouraging to note that many comments said it was a decent car, just not worth the asking price. But the seller did say he’s open to offers…