|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » 1980S » Bmw ( RSS)
-
|
Moving your race car's battery to the rear of the car helps reduce the nose-heaviness problem inherent in most front-engined designs, but heavy-gauge battery cable is mighty expensive stuff when you're on a tight budget. When you're trying to squeeze under that $500 limit at the 24 Hours Of LeMons, you won't be buying any new cables… but your friendly wrecking yard has the solution! BMW E30s are easy to find in the self-service yards, and they came right from the factory with a very nice trunk-mounted battery setup. The big self-service junkyard chains generally have a single price for all battery cables, which means that the 15-footer that runs from the trunk to the engine compartment will cost the same as a skinny 18" job from a Sentra. When the Half Price Sale is on, we're talking about $7 for both cables and terminals; not a bad deal for 20 pounds of copper! For its trunk-mounted battery setup, the Black Metal V8olvo used some 1-gauge welding cable I'd hoarded...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. I've been neglecting the big BMWs for most of this series, so it's time to follow up the the '86 735i with another E23 from the cocaine-and-S&L-money-mad mid-1980s. Remember the Savings And Loan Crisis? Wild West loans on worthless assets and egregious fraud following in the wake of deregulation of a once-staid sector of the financial system, ultimately costing 160 billion bucks in taxpayer money? Wait, that sounds familiar, except for the bargain price tag… anyway, here's the kind of car that a low-level S&L scamster would have bought with the proceeds of his first "dead horses for dead cows" loan. Now that I'm looking for these cars (and don't worry, 5 Series fans, I'll get some of your cars too), I'm seeing them all over the island. This '84 has seen shinier days, but it still gets its owner...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. The BMW E24 is not exactly an endangered species, but it's such a good-looking car that every single one I see in Alameda qualifies for this series. Never mind that I have photographs of six Alameda 2002s stockpiled- it's 6 Series time again! This car is owned by the man I consider to be the King Of Alameda BMWs; not only does he have a '74 E9 on the street, he's got a turbocharged 745i and who knows what other droolworthy Bavarian steel in the garage and scattered around the neighborhood. We'll be seeing the rest of his cars soon enough, but today it's the E24's turn. He picked up this '82 633CSi cheap when its previous owner despaired of ever getting his PCH running. It needs some work, but the body is straight and it now runs just fine. It's tough to find an example of car-quality-per-dollar quite as good as...
|
-
|
Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! In our last Hell Project matchup, we learned that two-thirds of Jalopnik readers would choose a Mustang-based Fauxrrari over an Integra-based one as their ride of choice in the Lake Of Fire. The Lake Of Fire, as we know, is rough on body panels… but not nearly as rough as it is on brain-scramblingly complex German electronics. That means we're going to return to Hell Über Alles , with a couple of precision-engineered German machines with bargain-of-a-lifetime price tags. The BMW E23 745i was quite a machine, with the 252 horses churned out by its turbocharged/intercooled 3.2 or 3.4 liter I6 representing a very impressive figure for its era, but they weren't sold in North America. BMW shoppers had to make do with the naturally-aspirated 733i and 735i over here… that is, unless a buyer was willing to brave the wilds of the gray-market import jungle...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. There's been no shortage of BMWs in this series, but I've sort of overlooked the 5 and 7 series cars so far. No more! Today we'll look at one of the last of the E23s , a somewhat scuffed but still proud 735i, located in the post-late-50s landfill part of town, not far from the '66 Dodge A100 Sportsman . Driving one of these things back in the 80s showed that you were serious . At $36,880 list (well over 75 grand- and climbing- in today's inflato-dollars), you could have bought nine brand-new Yugos and had enough left over for a couple of pretty clean used Datsun B210s. Tough decision! Nowadays, these cars have depreciated down to about 2-3% of their original purchase price. Pretty good bang-for-buck, in terms of how much German engineering and sophistication you get for your money: a 182-horsepower six-cylinder engine, big brakes...
|
-
|
newVideoPlayer("/81_BMW315_Germany_494.flv", 506, 423,""); We couldn't get the gas-sipping BMW 315 over here in Nordamerika ; instead, we had to make do with the thirsty 320i version of the E21 platform. Over in Germany, however, the money saved on gas by the 315 facilitated drive-by Quaalude deals between wholesome-looking tennis players… or whatever the hell is going on in this ad. Key swapping?
|
-
|
We love the BMW 6 series cars around here, and so far we've seen an '83 633CSi and an '87 L6 parked on the Alameda street. You fans of the early 5 and 7 series BMWs will have your day, as I'm going to shoot at least one example of each for this series... but that's going to have to wait, because we've got a "stop the presses" sort of a find for today. Yes, it's what appears to be a genuine first-generation BMW M6 (or a really, really good fake). I was out for a walk and spotted this red shark parked in a handicapped zone next to Alameda Hospital. You see, handicapped drivers here in the Bay Area don't allow their disabilities to dilute their love for fast German cars . Fewer than 2,000 E24 M6s were sold in North America during the 1983-89 period. The '87 came with a 256-horse six and a price tag of $55,950 ($106,695.07 in 2008 bucks), just a few grand less than a new Porsche 928S. This example is in very nice condition for a street-driven 21...
|
-
|
In another setback to French dreams of displaying the All-Time Eternal Project Car Damnation MegaTrophy (which turns into a pile of red powder within a few weeks) at the top of the Eiffel Tower, the hybridized British Leyland machine obliterated the Peugeot diesel in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll. The endless battle between PCH Superpowers Britain, France, and Italy will hold a cease-fire today, as we're so inspired by the beauty and coke-dealer-style original price tag of this morning's PCH car that we have no choice but to fill your garage with the sulfurous fumes of two gorgeous- yet maddeningly complex- Bavarian machines today. Back in 1967, many of those hankering for a German performance car usually went for the Porsche 911 (priced at about $5,900) or maybe the Mercedes-Benz 250SL ($6,500). But what about the BMW 2000C, which could be purchased for a mere $5,000 and offered handling and style galore? Not many chose the BMW, which means they're quite difficult...
|
-
|
On Monday, we headed over to Frozen Finnish Car Hell and watched the '61 Ford Taunus wagon beat the '72 Opel Kadett in the Choose Your Eternity poll . Today we're in the mood for Very Expensive German Luxury, which is always an excellent Project Car Hell theme. You see, high-end German cars have always been chock-full of leading-edge technology, which means that the passage a decade or three can really knock down the purchase price of a nice example... well, that is, if you don't mind a car that needs some TLC! It's time for another Jalopnik Fantasy Garage resident to make an appearance on the Hell That Is Project! Now, many of you may have felt that a genuine 6.9 Mercedes-Benz would never appear in this series, since it's so difficult to find one cheap enough to make the cut. To that sentiment we simply hiss a stern Prussian "NEIN!" in response. That's because we've managed to find this 1979 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears...
|
-
|
This series has become a real balancing act for me, as I try to make sure I don't neglect one type of vehicle for too long. We had a Chrysler A-body recently, and we're definitely due for an air-cooled Beetle one of these days. Now I realize with a shock that it's been two long months since our last Bayerische Motoren Werke machine . I could show you one of the several Alameda 2002s that I've shot recently (though I'm still hunting that 1500 I see around town), but instead we're getting a Late Malaise 320i with a most intriguing vanity plate. 1983 was the last year for the E21 BMWs, and maybe the end of the line for BMW's American image of being primarily about sportiness. As the 80s ground on, a BMW in the driveway came to symbolize something other than a pure appreciation of the car's driving qualities. This example is in nice solid original condition. The question is: does David Hasselhoff own it? Does he have a secret crash pad in Alameda? A little too...
|
-
|
During my last visit to a local self-service junkyard, I noticed far more than the usual number of expensive German cars from the 80s, mostly in non-wrecked condition. Has some threshold been reached, where such cars are no longer worth maintaining? Here's a handful of photos of an '80 633CSi ($32,825 new, $83,232 in 2007 dollars), an '84 633CSi ($40,705 new, $81,855 in 2007 dollars), and an '89 Mercedes-Benz 560SEL ($72,280 new, $121,789 in 2007 dollars). I must admit that I wondered- briefly- if that big Mercedes V8 would fit in a Crown Victoria's engine compartment. galleryPost('JunkFlashGermansTop', 3, 'High-End German Iron Awaits The Crusher, Part 1'); galleryPost('JunkExpensiveGermansJump', 6, 'High-End German Iron Awaits The Crusher, Part 2');
|
-
|
It was bad enough to go a month without a Chrysler A-Body in this series, but two months with no BMWs? That's how long it's been! I've got several 2002s photographed (and I've been stalking a 1502 that roams the island), but all the recent K.I.T.T. talk around these parts has me feeling mighty Eighties. That means we need to don our Members Only jackets, put on our Vuarnet shades, apply some ointment to our suppurating herpes sores (wait, is herpes more of a 70s thing? OK, make that chlamydia!), brush up on our Oliver North quips, and take a look at that beautifully apt symbol of Eighties excess: the 1987 BMW L6. galleryPost('DOTS87L6Top', 6, '1987 BMW L6 Down On The Street Part 1'); Even though I was living in dirty-S&L-money-drenched Orange County in the mid-80s and no doubt saw hundreds of these things back in the day, I have only the faintest memories of the BMW L6. When I first spotted this car, I thought the L6 emblem was actually an I 6 emblem...
|
|
|
|