The Diamond In The Rough

It was a long road that brought me to finally find my car that I am currently driving. Last summer I was an intern in downtown Salt Lake City and I made a friend who worked on the same floor that I did. We found out that we were both interested in cars and automotive hobbies, like road racing. After chatting for a few weeks I found out that he was a big fan of the early BMW models and he educated me quite a bit about them; especially the E30 models. He himself had a BMW 2002 and his dad had a 1989 BMW M3.

The BMW E30 is a compact executive car made by BMW. It was the successor of the BMW E21 in 1982 and was replaced by the BMW E36 in 1990. BMW continued to produce the cabriolet (convertible) E30 well into 1993. The Touring remained in production until 1994 when the E36 touring replaced it.

My friend told me about the quality and longevity that these early BMW’s were known for if they were taken care of properly from the get-go; I fell in love with these cars. My friend showed me a few places where I could start looking at them. I would occasionally peruse listings and ooh and awe a little bit, but I never seriously considered buying one.

I had a car that was reliable and I liked. My parents let me use “little blue.” She is a 1993 Saturn SL1 that now has about 231,000 miles and is still going strong. At the time, I started to consider that I should probably get my own car upon graduation and thus I started to look at newer sedans that would serve my needs, not wants. However, all that my budget would allow without going into debt would be a 5-7 year old car that had about 60 or 70 thousand miles. After a lot of thought, I decided that I wanted to find a dependable E30 that I could drive for a few years until I could afford to buy a new car. Since I am not planning on putting a lot of miles on my car in the next few years, I figured I could wait for a while, get a real job, and then purchase a new sedan. Then I could convert my BMW into a track car.

I started to get more tips and things to look for in the E30 cars from my friend. I looked around in the newspaper classifieds, the Utah SCCA chapter classifieds, KSL cars.com and even eBay Motors.

I found one that I thought was perfect after a few weeks of looking. It was a 1990 325is which is the model that I wanted. It had been race prepared with a few aftermarket items. Such as air intake, exhaust, race wheels, and a few other parts. However, the inside of the car wasn’t in very good shape and he was asking a lot of money for the amount of miles that were on the car. I was really excited at first, but then I just didn’t feel good about it. After some serious consideration, I didn’t get that car and I felt really good about that. As a side note, a few months ago I was looking at the Utah SCCA classifieds online and that car came up, as a bargain because the transmission was out of commission and there was a large oil leak in the engine. Coincidence, I think not.

The BMW 325is was an upgrade from the standard 325i, as some new features were added to the car as standard. These included the full electrics package, BMW sports seats, black roof-liner, BMW M-technic II body kit, BMW 14 inch BBS wheels and a Close Ratio gearbox. Other features also found on the 325is were options; however, over time some have been mistaken for standard features. These options include a Limited Slip Differential (LSD), leather interior, and sunroof and 15 inch BBS wheels.

Anyway, so I kept looking. I drove one of two more, but I just couldn’t find one that I really liked and was also in my price range. I finally decided to look on Craig’s List, and I found it. It was a 1987 BMW 325is. The paint on the outside definitely needed to be redone, but the inside was in great shape for an ’87 and it only had 162,000 miles. I called the seller and asked to test drive the car. I took the car for a spin and thought it might be the one. The car had been on the market for a few weeks so I took some time to think about it and decided to purchase it.

Despite the fact that the car is 22 years old, it is really fun to drive. I can only imagine what it must have been like to drive when it was brand new. So far I have really measured my gas mileage just a couple of times. It seems to get about 32 miles per gallon on the freeway doing about 70 miles per hour, and around 20-22 miles per gallon around town, depending on how I am driving.

The car turned out to be a diamond in the rough. The lady that owned the car, before the seller bought it, had the car since 1999. She had a lot of work done at BMW of Murray and maintenance was performed regularly. Most of the receipts for work done to the car over the past years came with the car. Many of the major repairs had been done around 150,000 miles which means I only have a couple of things to fix and she should be good to go for a long time. It appears that the previous owner drove the car very lightly for a few years because the sales receipts show that during that span only 1500 miles or so rolled over on the odometer.