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Oct 28, 2009 07:00 AM
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Detroit, 3:06 AM
Wed Feb 10
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E30s are a dime a dozen, and you probably wouldn't give an early 318i a second glance. But today, Nice Price or Crack Pipe has one with a sassy top that's ready to give you a peek.
Yesterday's ricer caught the bullet train to Crack Pipe with 55% of you getting fast and furious on the door number two option. Let's stay in that 1985 mind set, but instead of looking to the land of the rising sun, let's go to another of America's WWII rivals- Germany - for today's contender. It's also modded, and at a $3,995 asking, it's cheaper too!
What we have here is a 1985 BMW 318i, which is a gray market car, as evidenced by its chrome bumpers and the fact that it has a Baur targa top. The Baur conversion on these cars is very well done, and BMW offered the conversions with full factory warranties.
The history of Karosserie Baur is as long as that of BMW's auto making endeavors. The company started engineering convertible top mechanisms back in the ‘20s, and has done development work on most every BMW drop-top ever since. In addition to adding head room to the rondel brand's coupes, Baur also built most of the M1 supercars when Lamborghini abandoned the project after seeing something shiny and getting distracted. The Baur/BMW relationship is an open one, and neither partner gets upset when the other brings home a conquest. For Baur, that includes Opel, for whom they built a number of similar targa-top modded Kadetts, and Porsche, for whom they built the 959. As you can imagine, quality is a hallmark of Baur's work.
The E30 underpinning the Baur top is also a pretty rock-solid piece of hardware, although the 101-bhp 318i is not quite as ultimate a driving machine as you might like. This black on black example sports the Getrag 260 5-speed, which should help make best use of those few ponies. The seller claims the top is new, as are the rims (meh) and the springs and shocks (yeah), although from the pictures it looks like the exterior is not so great, with chips on the nose (bleh) and the federalized side-marker lights that look a little tacky (feh!).
The car is described as driving like new, and that everything works, including the A/C, which as it's an '85, could conceivably still be freon. If the seller is to be believed - and when have you ever known a used-car salesman to lie? - then this may just be a pretty sweet deal for that $3,995 price. If you were wondering about comparison shopping, he has another one for sale for $10,995- and you can grab a taste of that right here.
So what do you think? Is the seller dropping the top on high prices here? Or, is this from a gray market that sells nothing but Crack?
You decide.
City of Angels Craigslist or go here if the ad disappears.
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