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Detroit, 12:45 AM
Wed Dec 9
27 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/08/09
Secondly, the clear blinker lenses in front have gotta go - makes this thoroughbred look like any old beat up and "tuned" 525i out in Staten Island.
12/07/09
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12/07/09
*Shameless self-promotion alert*
Here's some further reading on the subject: [www.examiner.com]
12/07/09
Although with the boot lid up, it looks Oldsmobiley. Plus "M-ty" my wallet is the win.
You could do a lot worse for 10 large.
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12/07/09
I am willing to take the risk of being a dick. This is a good-looking example at an excellent price, especially considering the level of refinement and performance that it offers. I would park politely inside the lines, use turn signals, and maintain polite following distances...
...until one bright Sunday morning with nobody out and about. Twisty valley roads lie all around my area here. Then I'd let the little monster out of the box, and we would play.
12/07/09
" I am usually annoyed by the behavior I see from their drivers. Apologies to courteous, un-self-absorbed BMW owners, but too often the Ultimate Driving Machine is piloted by a dick."
Non-self-abosorbed BMW jalopnik reading hoon here. Yes, I understand. THose people suck.
but really, do we need to hear about them on EVERY single article relating to BMW?
Shit gets old.
12/07/09
I just deleted my second draft of my statement defending my stance. Nothing I say will mollify you. I beg your pardon for not monitoring how much old shit you've had to tolerate. Mea culpa.
12/07/09
The seller has been honest enough to photograph pretty clearly the first endlessly annoying fault you'd find if you bought this thing. The vinyl in the interior shrinks and pulls away from the panels. It looks like complete crap. There's no known fix short of replacement, and guess who has the only replacement parts (flying parts in from Germany is just something you have to get used to as an M5 owner). The pics do not depict the headliner, which will also certainly have started to let go of the ceiling. That's an easier fix than the interior trim but still annoying as hell.
Graverobber, easy to shift? You've never driven one. Unless the original clutch has been replaced with the updated one from the '93 M5, it's not even easy to mash the pedal. But even with the clutch update, the shift lever will have you looking like half of Popeye within 2 months of purchasing this ride. Which leads you to the next of the endlessly annoying interior defects: the illuminated shift knob will break. It's a $350 part, and the replacement will also break. Really unfortunate design flaw in a car that shifts like an '80s Lambo. I keep harping on the interior, but it really will cause you to hate the car. The "leather" is the worst quality you've ever felt. I think it came from newly liberated Eastern Block cattle raised on iron filings and industrial pollutants. If you've never experienced an '80s or '90s BMW interior, you'll seriously wonder how anyone ever hung around long enough to discover that they're fun to drive. This car can also be expected to have the power seat actuators break (because they're made of stretchy vinyl; "it's a known defect," to quote every BMW mechanic's mantra). The AC compressor will fail. It's a $2200 part, and you'd be ill advised to try to do the work yourself. It's a special design for the M5, and it also lives solely in Germany.
The exterior is hardly better. The headlights will fail, but unlike everything else on the car, those are stock E34, and it will give you the opportunity to update the look with the cooler lights from the '94. Exterior blacked-out, chrome trim will actually just fly off the car at some point. It's twice as expensive as the non-blacked-out E34 trim, which itself is exorbitant.
The thing the seller hasn't told us is whether the revolutionary self-leveling rear suspension is operable. It's "revolutionary" in the sense that it will revolt and take up arms against the car's owner. Since I've never heard of one lasting even 100K mi, let's assume you have a conventional set up in the back.
The only thing you really won't have much worry over is the engine itself (provided you spring for a wet compression test before purchase), and the Dinan chip is cheap as hell and pushes the HP to almost 350. The car is desperately fun to drive when it's working right.
But enough about the joys of ownership; the most important reason this is CP is that, with patience, you'll see lower-mileage examples for less or similar money. And they're likely to be black.
12/07/09
Then I skipped the rest.
NP!
12/07/09
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12/07/09
Sure, E34's do have interior delamination issues (this includes, but is not limited to, the door vinyl door panels, the headliner, and under extreme circumstances, the dash as well.) This is a known problem, but not every E34 has it. The ticket is to source someone parting an extended leather car with leather door panels that do not delaminate. It's not impossible, and it won't run you the full $400/door panel that the dealer requests. The headliner is also a bit annoying, but I think you are forgetting a major point here, these cars are between 14 and 21 years old, go out and find a car of similar vintage with zero interior flaws and get back to me. Sure, the adhesives they used were as ineffective as a popsicle in Antarctica, they only started showing this after about 15 years of normal use. Not bad for 90's adhesive technology.
The quality of the nappa leather??? Puh-leeze. It's not the Connolly hides in your Bentley, but it's certainly supple enough after a few applications of Leatherique (or similar products.) As for the seat cables that are a known E34 problem, but they are certainly not the $2200 that you quoted. I had some go out on my mother's E34 540i M-Sport during a road trip to USGP 2005, parts and labor were a little over $500 courtesy of Dreyer and Reinbold. ETK says something like $800 when I checked last, but prices must vary (quite a lot in your case) from dealer to dealer. The E34's have a few electrical issues, there's no disputing that, but the cars are more a labor of love than anything else. You just write them off as bad cars because of this, but after a few drives in a well-sorted E34, you will change your mind about them... moreso in the case of the E34 M5.
S38/M-specific parts are expensive, yes. If you are expecting discounts or free parts, stick with something else, you have no business owning one of these.
The shift knob breaks? The headlamps break? Wrong on both counts. Unless you he-man the shifter during every shift (which I will concede, isn't as easy as a non-M E34) there is absolutely no problem. The headlamps don't fail, a solder in the Lamp Control Module (LKM) does, you can source those from any E34 though, or you can find them all day long from people parting out both non-M E34's and E34 M5's. Going back to the shifting topic, no, the E34 M5 is not like the E39 M5. It is a car that doesn't like low-speed city driving, but once you develop a repertoire, the small amount of finesse needed to make gear changes will become second nature. Make no mistake, the S38 (and the S38/M88 family in general) is a full-on racing motor, it's not been nancied too much for street use. The lunatics at M GmbH plopped this in a normal E34 and made some enhancements, so if you're looking for an easy-driving M5, might I suggest an E39 M5 (although with your strict interior criterium, you may dislike that as well.)
The SLS, while a nuisance, is nowhere near as bad as the EDC III that the Nürburgring Package 3.6L M5's and all 3.8L M5's (and the M540i/540i M-Sport) got. We're in the process of tackling that one on my mother's car, $1000+/corner for the strut alone. See, the normal US M5 ain't so bad.
In conclusion, I think you are way off simply writing off the E34 M5 due to a few expensive components. As I said before, it's a labor of love, and you have to be willing to put out some cash on upkeep or you shouldn't even own one at all. They are fantastic cars, the last handbuilt M5 and it shows in a number of areas. These cars are approaching their second decade of life, people buying them now are buying them at a point when a few components may be approaching their expiration date, but that's why they're being sold at the same price as a used Camry. Once some of these components are replaced, it's an amazing car, I promise you. Just about any car of this vintage will need some of the exact parts replaced, you'll just pay a premium for having that ///M badge, get used to it because it will soon be that way for cars like E36 M3, etc. It's just a fact of life. Am I saying the car in the for sale ad is a perfect specimen, absolutely not, but judging by the condition the car appears to be in, it's leaning more towards NP rather than CP.
12/07/09
12/07/09
In that regard, I think you deserve a commendation for your efforts. You have done your duty, though. Feel free to sell your '91 to one of the salivators on the board and pick up your Jalopnik Service Medal on the way out. I suspect, based on the slavering here, that you could get at least 10K for yours.
Oh, FWIW, I've wanted one of these things since I first read about them in 1990ish and thought to myself "three HUNDRED horsepower?! holy freaking hell!!" That was in the days when Honda Accords weren't bumping up against that figure. I came fairly close to buying one a few years back, but sanity prevailed at the last moment and I ended up with an E46 330 that was probably just as fast but had 1/10th the soul.
Also, Nice Price, as long as you go in with your eyes open.
12/07/09
Look, the reason I mentioned it is because it's pretty easy to understand the stiff clutch, but the lever effort is inexplicable (especially given the short shifter kits out there that manage to reduce both travel and effort), and due respect to your experience, I don't think many people would consider it a good point of the car.
12/07/09
[www.autotrader.com]
And that's from Autotrader, the internet home for terminally optimistic sellers.
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12/07/09
That is a savings-account-checking nice price.
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