davintosh

Missed it by this much!

I first saw the ad for this 1984 528e on CraigsList in early December, but kind of dismissed it because the price sounded too low, and the seller posted only one photo. The ad came back in late December; it hadn’t sold first time around. This time the seller included a link with a slideshow of about 40 images, and it looked very clean, and the price was still the same. I emailed the owner and got a lengthy response back; obviously a BMW nut aficionado, and a big fan of the E28 model, as he currently owns — or rather ‘owned’ — two of them.

He had owned this particular example since 1994; a feat I consider to be nothing short of amazing because I’m unable to stick with one vehicle for more than five years or so. His email described his “affair with Bimmers”, how he came to own this particular E28, and a bit of its history. The reason he’s selling it is that he’s got too many BMW’s; a 2000 528i, an ’88 E28 that his wife drives, and a ’99 K1200LT touring bike. He wrote that he picked up the 2000, “in Feb 2007 and thought it was time to put the ’84 up for sale. I couldn’t do it. I kept it in the garage until now. My bride says her ’88 goes in the garage this winter or I go sleep in the shed…so here it is for sale.”

The asking price of $1,799 sounded a bit too good to be true at first, but this guy sounded legit, and from the pictures, the car certainly looked clean. Figuring that purchasing this car could be funded by selling the Suzuki — which in its present condition ought to fetch an easy $2,000 this time of year — I thought I’d go for it. The biggest issue I had with the 528 was it’s location; just north of Chicago, or roughly 550 miles from home. Even the seller, when he figured out where I was located, was pretty dumbfounded that I’d consider driving that far for it. “Yep, you’ve got the bug,” was all he could say about it.

But after running the idea past Yvonne, she gave me a green flag on the project, and the Chicago road trip didn’t really faze her at all. I emailed the seller, asking if he’d be around over the New Years holiday weekend, and yes, he would. But… He had a couple of other local prospects on the line who would be stopping by on the 1st and the 2nd. Then this morning (Jan. 2) he emailed me that someone who had contacted him after running the first ad called yesterday and stopped by last night; the deal was made, and the car is gone, gone, gone. Rats.

It’s probably a good thing that it sold; there’s snow in the forecast for the next couple of days, so a ‘quick’ trip to Chicago could get quite interesting. That and the fact that I still have the Suzuki makes the funding issue a bit questionable. I could probably have scrounged up enough for it today, but it would likely have been kind of tight getting it together on such short notice. But I think the plan hatched through this little adventure is a good start; if I want a car like that I should first spiff up and sell the Suzuki then start shopping, using one of the kids’ cars in the interim. That way when a deal like that comes available, I’ll be much more able to jump on it quickly. After shopping around a bit tonight, my hunch that clean E28’s are hard to find was pretty much confirmed, so finding another like this one might take a while. But the seller mentioned that he may be selling his ’88 in the spring…

Although the car deal didn’t work out, and that’s disappointing, my correspondence with the seller did yield some good BMW-related links… like bimmertraderonline.com and roadfly.com, which both have classified ads for classy import cars. Of course, the one I missed out on is the nicest/cheapest car on either site, but I digress… Then there is bimmer-mag.com; of course there is a magazine specifically for BMW owners. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a dozen or so more. bavauto.com has a ton of performance parts for BMW’s, and mye28.com looks like a great forum for BMW nuts. So, it’s not a total loss. Sigh.

Here’s another hot BMW I’d like to own; a 1995 BMW 540i. And this one is not your run-o’-the-mill 540… This one’s got a 6-speed manual transmission!

The E34 — also known as the 5-series — was built from 1987 to 1996. I actually like body style of the 533 (of the E28 variety) I wrote about last week better than the E34, but I could live with this one. The E28 has truly classic lines — it screams BMW with a front end that mimics the 6-series coupes — but the E34 is a fine looking car in its own way, sporting classic lines that belie its age. The 6-speed makes it very desirable, and a bit rare. According to Wikipedia, “Only 1357 examples of the 95 540i 6spd were produced” and sold in North America. I don’t know if it’d be considered a collector item, but it is one rare bird. That combined with the 286 hp/295 ft·lb 4.4L V8 would make this a fun ride.

As appealing as buying an older BMW is to me, another attractive feature of this one is that it was built after 1994; prior to that date vehicle air conditioning systems used R12 refrigerant, which can be expensive to return to working order after things go wrong. I’ve converted two vehicles to R134, neither conversion yielded wonderful results, and I’d really rather not go that route again.

This particular 540i is located in Colorado Springs; a mere 12 hour drive for me. But for a 13 year old car with 112,000 miles and an engine/transmission combination like this… All for under $6,000? I dunno. If it weren’t for that little obstacle in the shape of a dollar sign, as in I don’t have it, I’d be there. Unfortunately, it’s probably already sold. Or it ought to be.