With almost 300K under its belt, you’d figure that today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe M Coupe has had everything that could go wrong do so. Let’s see if that includes paying its seller’s asking price.
So, it has recently come to my attention that you all don’t appreciate the finer things in life. And by finer things, I mean yesterday’s 1980 Clénet Series II neo-classic convertible. Okay, I get that a car of that nature may only appeal to an older generation. As such, it likely wasn’t your cup of White Claw. The thing of it is though, the seller was asking $29,995 for the Clénet and based on evidence from the market, that’s pretty cheap. That makes the car’s 70 percent Crack Pipe loss all the more rueful.
Oh well, let’s cleanse the ol’ palate with something a little more modern and a lot less expensive.
If you mentally meander back to Monday, you’ll likely recall that we looked at a 1992 Mercedes 300D that had over 200K on the clock. Those miles weren’t so big a deal since they were incurred by a car hailing from a an era when Mercedes models were meant to last.
Today we have another car from a German maker, from the same general era, and which has—get ready for this—even more miles under its belt.
That’s right, this 1999 BMW M Coupe comes with an astounding 285,000 miles on the odometer. I’m actually shocked that those are documented as I would have expected the odo to be one of the first parts to break once the car hit around half those miles. Instead, it all seems to be in working order with nothing amiss other than the rear wiper not wagging.
The M Coupe is derivative of the Z3 roadster and we’ve discussed previously how, aside from giving birds a better opportunity to shit on you, it’s improved over its open-top predecessor in pretty much every single way.
Power here comes from BMW’s S52 DOHC straight six. That was good for 240 horsepower and 236 lb-ft of torque. There’s no saying how many of those are left in this M Coupe’s corral, but at the very least you’ll have fun finding out since the car is equipped with the standard Getrag five-speed stick.
The car looks like most of its mileage has been racked up closely following semis since there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of peppering on the nose. The silver paint is Deutschland delightful and seems to still be successfully holding on to its top coat. Factory Style 40 alloys are painted black on their spokes and inner rims and sport their roundel centers on all four corners.
The interior seems equally tidy, with leather for the seating surfaces and steering wheel. An alloy gear knob sits atop the center console where it awaits the chance to give you a second degree burn on hot days. Nothing save for a mobile phone mount looks out of place here, and the car even sports its original Alpine-sourced head unit.
Popping the clamshell hood presents a dusty but seemingly complete engine bay. There’s nothing weird in here. You won’t find any aftermarket camber plates or cold air intakes here. What you will see is a ton of Bavarian plastic and the embellishment of BMW M Power on the engine dress-up plate.
The ad says that the title is clean however that’s where things get a little sticky. If you look at the ass end of the car in the picture below you will see that it sports a California vanity plate—REX ROX. One would hope that means that the owner is Rex and that, when the moment is right, he does in fact Rock.
If you look a little more closely howver, you’ll note two stickers on that plate. One is for September, the month this car was first registered in the state. The other says 2018, which indicates the most current year of that ongoing registration.
Now, the last time I checked, it was 2019. That may indicate that this M Coupe is out of registration, and that may stem from its inability to pass California’s bi-annual tail pipe test. This is an early OBDII car and so it still should need a sniffer to run the test rather than just a computer connection. Emissions test failures typically stem from either too-high emission readings, a thrown code in the OBDII, or something amiss during the visual inspection. The test is also required by the State upon re-registration upon a sale so I guess the new owner will find out what’s up on that soon enough.
The seller’s goal of passing on that re-registration doesn’t seem to be going all that well. The car is aggressively priced and the seller claims that’s owed to its onerous mileage. In reference, an extremely low mileage ’02 S54 M Coupe just sold this year on Bring a Trailer for a full freaking $92,000. That site should more rightfully be called Bring a Trailer Full of Money.
This one, with its way-high miles, lesser S52 mill, and out of date registration is asking just a hair more than a tenth of that. The $9,800 price tag is also shy of what other similar but still lower mileage cars are asking.
What’s your take on that $9,800 for the car as it’s presented. Do those miles mean little? Or, is this a clownshoe that only a clown would buy?
You decide!
San Francisco Bay Area, CA Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Clyde C for the hookup!
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