Hey yall I am looking into this BMW on Facebook marketplace and I was wondering if this is a worthwhile/good purchase financially. I do not need this car to be a daily driver anytime soon, this would obviously be a project car. I have roughly $3000 in savings that I saved up for this intended purpose of buying and fixing a car. I am not worried about the no title thing because getting a new title where I live is fairly easy as long as the owner cooperates. Should I buy this car?
by LazyRip5045
13 Comments
“Is buying a no title non running 1980s project car that has sat for several decades a good financial decision”
What do you think bro?
At 15 years-old, for the love of god, no.
1800 car that leaves 3000 to make it run. This car is going to need more than your initial 3k to be able to drive it. I would personally not go near this thing.
These cars can have serious cascading failures in various systems that can require full rebuilds of large parts of the car. I would not learn to work on this car. It will be at best difficult and confusing and at worst impossible. That is to say, if you can throw significant money at it it’ll be INCREDIBLE. But if that’s not the case, realistically, and with how long it’s sat, not a good plan.
Terrible decision. That car is cool and worth restoring to save it, but you are not this car’s savior
$3k won’t get this anywhere near being nice maybe not even enough to make it drivable.
For reference I owned 2 E30s and sold the last one just a year ago. I experienced a ridiculously hard time finding quality parts that were affordable. Examples:
-Idle air control valve was around $400
-Button for fog lights $400 installed
-Belts and hoses were all reasonable around $30….BUT good luck finding one that doesn’t cost $85 to import from Turkey
-Timing belt $600 installed
-Power steering rack replacement $2k installed
-New shocks $800
-New weatherstripping $120 just for the rear windshield
Not including the tires you’ll need, another $500-$800. And it’s not even in good physical shape what are you thinking haha. Don’t buy
Even if it was free, there’s a really good chance it will take more than 3k to make this project minimally functional.
Thank you all for the feedback I now realize how extensive the repair process would be (labor wise, how long it would take, and how expensive it would be) and I acknowledge that I was definitely a little blinded by “cool car, low buying price” and didn’t do much research into its problems.
The best outcome is getting it into a decent condition visually and using it as decor for a car-themed coffee shop. If you want that thing to run, you’ll need to remove 40 buckets of rust from the body and replace every single component. Then there’s a 30/70 chance that it will run for a bit.
NO, this isn’t just a find new parts project. Plus it’s an automatic from the 80s.
Go check it out in person first. See what’s up with it.
Financially? No way. Viable? Depending on your perseverance. Fun? Depending on your definition of it 🙂
Fuck a good decision, it’s 1800$ classic BMW, ofc it’s not a good decision,but if you clean it and get it fixe you will have a wonderful car that you will likely keep for many years