A college chum and I leased a car for 60 days upon arriving in Brussels summer 1982, and toured Western Europe (I did the driving). We encountered many unbadged BMWs and Benzes on the highways, and when I took the factory tour at the Mercedes Customer Center in Stuttgart (they had great Cotomer Sevis there, BTW) I asked about that. I was told by the MBZ tourguide that custom body/drivetrain combos not in the factory lineup received no trunk badging. I suspect that this was one reason MBZ changed to the C-, E-, S-, and SL- naming convention in '93. Not a BMW follower at that age myself, I assume they used similar reasoning to delete the deck badge.
The single tailpipe nails this as a 528e, most likely.
I love the e28's; so much so that I bought my own earlier this year. $800 for an '84 528e that I'm currently refinishing (to that same color - burgundrot!) and spiffing up the interior and fixing some stuff in the engine compartment, and... Yes, it's my own Bavarian Project Car Hell. Just ask my wife. But don't ask her about the '87 535i that I'm in negotiations to buy; she'll give you an earful.
The premier e28 fanboy site is http://www.mye28.com/ Great people, great help, great support from fellow addicts.
Great find, great color. Hard to believe this rather plain little bugger cost that much back in the day.
Also, thanks for recalling Adnan. Which for some reason led me to hear Robin Leach's voice. Ah, the 80s! A cultural low watermark that will never quite go away.
The E28 is the car that turned me into a BMW fanboi. There is just something about that shape; even in the 80s it was angular, weird and jarring, like nothing else on the road. In that sense, it was a little like the Saab 900. The 6ers were pretty, much more conventionally good looking, but the 5ers just had something about them.
I came very close on a couple of occasions to buying an E28 M5. They are perhaps the zenith of 80s BMWness, and the magic of depreciation means you can get a very nice one for less than a new Kia. But at the end of the day these cars combine supercar maintenance regimes and costs with middling performance by today's standards meant that I couldn't justify it. Maybe someday.
As an aside, whenever anyone starts moaning and bitching about how BMW's M division has lost the plot because it is no longer building cars as pure and as focused as the E30 M3, the E28 M5 is the car that I flash to. Both before the E30 M3 and after, the M division was about putting very high performance engines into luxury sports sedans, not about building homologation specials. The E28 M5 stands as a perfect example of this, and has just as much claim to M history as does its more talked about smaller brother.
@FormerlyPreferredCustomer: That's a good point, it's not the M division that's lost the plot, it's BMW. Granted, they're still good cars, but it almost feels as if they're losing that very German sensibility.
@FormerlyPreferredCustomer: The M5's can be spendy in the maintenance, but the answer to that is the M535 with has most all the handling goodies of the M5, but uses the M30 engine instead of the M5's DOHC powerplant. Not as much HP, but still very quick and very maintainable and very modifiable. Lots of people stick turbos on the M30 and get the HP up to M levels.
@thunder; now eta-powered: I still want to put a motor from an E36 M3 into a 528e, for near- M5 performance at a much lower cost. I've seen people put the M50 into E30s (you can even get special wiring harness adapters) so I figure it's feasible. And by "feasible," I mean "kind of stupid, like most of my car-related ideas."
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Time for me to begin stalking the white E24 'round my hometown, I think. All that greatness, with two fewer doors!
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I love the e28's; so much so that I bought my own earlier this year. $800 for an '84 528e that I'm currently refinishing (to that same color - burgundrot!) and spiffing up the interior and fixing some stuff in the engine compartment, and... Yes, it's my own Bavarian Project Car Hell. Just ask my wife. But don't ask her about the '87 535i that I'm in negotiations to buy; she'll give you an earful.
The premier e28 fanboy site is http://www.mye28.com/ Great people, great help, great support from fellow addicts.
07/12/09
Also, thanks for recalling Adnan. Which for some reason led me to hear Robin Leach's voice. Ah, the 80s! A cultural low watermark that will never quite go away.
07/12/09
I came very close on a couple of occasions to buying an E28 M5. They are perhaps the zenith of 80s BMWness, and the magic of depreciation means you can get a very nice one for less than a new Kia. But at the end of the day these cars combine supercar maintenance regimes and costs with middling performance by today's standards meant that I couldn't justify it. Maybe someday.
As an aside, whenever anyone starts moaning and bitching about how BMW's M division has lost the plot because it is no longer building cars as pure and as focused as the E30 M3, the E28 M5 is the car that I flash to. Both before the E30 M3 and after, the M division was about putting very high performance engines into luxury sports sedans, not about building homologation specials. The E28 M5 stands as a perfect example of this, and has just as much claim to M history as does its more talked about smaller brother.
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Or just Bruce, for short.
That is a nice-looking old Beemer, a real classic, if a little abundant. Would be nicer if it weren't for those big, bad, bureaucratic bumpers.
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diving boardsbumpers. The euro versions of the e28 were much easier on the eyes in that regard.07/12/09
href="#c14189730">Mobius_1000_Club:you´re right, the Euro spec has nicer looks.