Quote:
Originally Posted by Efthreeoh
It sounds like you do not work on your own cars. If that is true, then you'll probably be taken aback by the prices for taking care of the mechanical side of things. BMWs last easily to 300,000 miles and we'll into 20 years of existence if they are properly taken care of and maintained by either a BMW specialist, or by an owner/DIY'er that knows how to work on BMWs. I right now have a 24 year old Z3 owned since new, and owned an E30 since new for 18 years and 250,000 miles. I DIY all my stuff, so it's affordable to keep Bimmers for long periods and high miles.
But if you are going to pay for the mechanical restoration, that is going to require financial commitment on your part and when added up, will most likely be beyond the value of the car in its current state. Letting it sit in a garage for that long is classified as neglect. I doubt it was well maintained, sadly. 115,000 miles is nothing for a BMW and nothing on an E46 chassis; that E46 should be in better shape than it is for that little amount of miles. If you get the mechanicals up to par, the car will easily go 250,000 miles, if you want to take it that far and assuming there's no goss mechanical issues with it. If you invest in it now to correct the negligent ownership, it's only worth doing if you are going to take it to 200,000 or more miles. What event(s) led to the haphazard or ad-hoc 4-year storage?
I currently have 4 BMWs (all 3-series or variants of) and add the E30, my total chassis miles is over 1.1 million miles. Of that total, the driven miles is 980,000, so I speak from extensive experience. Just wanted to qualify so you know I'm not BS'ing you.
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You are correct - I've never been much of a DIYer. I've owned mostly new cars for most of my life (with the exception of my first 2 cars - a 93 maxima and a 00 maxima). So the extent of my DIY experience is oil changes and spark plugs, and a few small cosmetic things like headlight replacement, and a tail tidy on a bike.
My brother in law who used to daily this car ended up buying an f13 650i coupe, then moved away - leaving this car at his parents house, who then refused to sell it for whatever reason (I'd qualify them as hoarders). But they also never drove it, and so it's been literally collecting dust.
If I do go through the process, the goal is to keep it indefinitely. Definitely not looking at this as a fixer upper to flip. The way I see it there's 2 ways I can go about this process:
1) Have a mechanic bring the mechanics up to par, and then continue progress on my own as a learning opportunity
2) Just have everything done professionally
I think that all will depend on how much time I have to be able to spend on it, but it may be a combination of #1 and #2.