Beginning the Journey

The Car

With 90,000 miles and 13 years it has a few issues:

• Snow tires were installed on the back by a previous owner.
• Tires on the front are showing signs of dry rot.
• The Z3 sagging glovebox problem
• Driver side door speakers don't work. All the other speakers function.
• Trunk shocks have broken connectors
• HVAC illumination for night driving is not functioning
• Passenger seat is stuck in the fully raised or up position
• Both seats have the Z3 sliding seat problem
• Illuminated stick shift knob does not illuminate when the lights are on.
• Air conditioner / air recirculation buttons do not illuminate when turned on.

In spite of all this it's a great ride.
I'm looking forward to fixing these problems and reporting on what was done as a way of giving back to the Z3 online community.

Background

For as long as I can remember I've been interested in cool cars. The thing about cool cars is that they can be a challenge to work into real life. Suppose I had a mint 67 Camero, it would not make sense to me to drive it back and forth to work every day. Something like that should be preserved and kept low milage. Driving it every day would wear it out.

My first BMW was purchased because I wanted a convertible. At the time I wanted a Miata but my wife added the requirement to my automobile purchase that the car must have four seats eliminating a Miata from the list. While scouring used car lots in the area for a four seat convertible I ran across a 1988 BMW 325 converible in cinnabar red. It had 80,000 miles on it. After much research I found that parts weren't as expensive as I had thought and the cars were known to go 200,000 miles. They were only asking $6,000 for the car so if it ran for a few years without reliability issues it would be cheap transportation.

The test drive sold me on the car and it became the first of five BMWs I've owned over the last 10 years. All of them have had at least 80,000 miles when I purchased them. All of them, so far, have been driven at least another 100,000 miles before selling it.

• 1988 325 convertible, 5 speed manual, sold with 180,000 miles
• 1997 328 convertible, 5 speed manual, still running with 196,000 miles
• 1997 540 automatic, sold with 180,000 miles
• 2002 530 automatic, still running with 120,000 miles
• 1998 M Roadster, 5 speed manual

My experience over the last 10 years has been that BMWs are cool cars that are built to be driven every day.