325ix prodiuction figures

[dirty30]

You live in Colorado. Those cars US sales figures were heavily dependent on markets with extreme snowy conditions. Rockies/ western slope, New England and Washington state still have a disproportionate number of older AWD cars running around because that's where they were sold and remained since new. Take for instance another rather obscure 80's AWD the VW quantum syncro wagon. There were very few imported to the US for four years. If you wanted to find one the only place that Craigslist routinely has then for sale is Colorado, Utah, Washington etc. Mountain cars like those didn't survive outside of those markets because they didn't necessarily serve a purpose in say ...Florida. It's obvious why you see so many still running around out there. I hadn't seen a quantum syncro in the wild since the last time I visited Colorado when I saw three in a week. Here in VA I know of a handful of IX's but most are nasty or being parted. Mine was a survivor, a daily driver for someone who cared for it but needed to move on from the constant attention it commanded. I looked up where it was originally sold a few weeks back, Schomp BMW in Colorado.

I am very skeptical of those numbers. Only 6000 produced for the US market? iX's are all around me, they are usually driven by older women and look stock. Considering its been over 20 years since the last one was produced I would not expect to see as many around as I do if only 6000 were sold in the US market.

How many were crashed? broken TB? cash 4 clunkers? parts cars/ junkyards? With that knowledge and 20 some years in between how are there so many left?

I can count of 10 different iXs owned by myself or people I personally know, not to mention the 10+ I've seen on craigslist. You see them on the road occasionally too. There were 3 or 4 on denver craigslist just last month.

Here are 2 today:

http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/3619536819.html

http://boulder.craigslist.org/cto/3600668183.html

[Isostar13]

Thanks Todd, I saw that, but I'm asking more specifically. How does he have access to this level of detail on the data? Was it published publicly at some time or does he just have insider access?

The reason I'm wondering is, if I was telling someone "hey, my car is 1 of XXX" and they asked me where or how I found that out, I don't think just saying "oh from bmw production data" is enough of a response.

Nando, any further details?

Thank you.

[nando]

Yes, somebody sent me full production information extracted from a BMW database.

I will post it. But right now it's not really in a web-friendly format.

as I said - mine are the only numbers backed up by real data.

as far as Colorado having an outsized number of ix's - it's completely true, it always has been true. I haven't seen another ix here in about 3 years, since my co-worker sold his.. to a guy in Colorado. :|

[Chruby99]

My iX is out of a Bellingham WA dealership. And here in the Reno/Tahoe area there are at least 10 including mine that I have seen.

[nando]

used car dealership? there's never been a BMW dealer here.

[Blendercloud]

My iX is out of a Bellingham WA dealership. And here in the Reno/Tahoe area there are at least 10 including mine that I have seen.

I actually bought my red '89 rust-free 2-door 5-speed iX from a guy named Steve in Reno in January 2011. Maybe you know him? It needed some TLC when I got it, but it has a functioning transfercase and was pretty clean. I looked for one for several years in that configuration with no rust. At $3,500 a lot of people felt like I paid a premium, but I've already had one offer for $5,500 for it.

I love the car. In times where the Midwest gets snow (like this winter -- 36 inches over three days of snow) this car is awesome! I've got some Blizzaks on it and the car just shreds through snow. It lets me keep my M5 in the garage where it should be in this kind of weather.

Thank you for the production information. It's nice to know that this car, while quite unique, is also equally as rare.

[nando]

yeah, $3500 is not a premium at all for a clean, rust free 2-door 5 speed ix.

if I had money/time/space, I'd find another one, clean, lower miles, and just restore it to stock.

[Chruby99]

Looks like there was a bmw vw and subie dealer between 90-95. Delivered to Alan BMW in Edmonds,WA on 8-89

[downforce22]

I'd like to make these into an online database but for now I'll just post some of the basics here.

Total worldwide, from 02/1985 through 12/1992: 43560

Total Euro: 28516
Total Japan: 8698
Total North America: 6346

2-Door: 12557
4-Door: 25730
Tourings: 5273

USA model year (based on september being start of new model year):
1988: 1715
1989: 2797
1990: 977
1991: 857

These figures are straight from BMW production data.

also interesting to know - there are actually a small handful of 1988 automatics - 41. Possibly these went to Canada or were rental cars. I found information a few years back that a car rental company bought a number of them for Ski rentals. The earliest six (07/87) were likely dealership demo cars. Two were 2-Door and four were 4-Door.

certainly there were 4 doors built for '88, but they all went to Canada.

Bumping this back up. Looks like the American and European numbers match those posted in this thread. And the Japanese numbers were not included in that thread.

Any chance you can tell model year production before 88 and european model year production?

The thread I referenced above says there was only about ~3200 pre facelift iX's made. I know of two in colorado springs (one is mine). I suspect your data should detail this. Mind sharing?

[The Dark Side of Will]

You live in Colorado. Those cars US sales figures were heavily dependent on markets with extreme snowy conditions. Rockies/ western slope, New England and Washington state still have a disproportionate number of older AWD cars running around because that's where they were sold and remained since new. Take for instance another rather obscure 80's AWD the VW quantum syncro wagon. There were very few imported to the US for four years. If you wanted to find one the only place that Craigslist routinely has then for sale is Colorado, Utah, Washington etc. Mountain cars like those didn't survive outside of those markets because they didn't necessarily serve a purpose in say ...Florida. It's obvious why you see so many still running around out there. I hadn't seen a quantum syncro in the wild since the last time I visited Colorado when I saw three in a week. Here in VA I know of a handful of IX's but most are nasty or being parted. Mine was a survivor, a daily driver for someone who cared for it but needed to move on from the constant attention it commanded. I looked up where it was originally sold a few weeks back, Schomp BMW in Colorado.

The same thing happened with the GM Pontiac 6000 AWD. There were ~2500 made from '88-'91, but most of them went to New England or stayed in the Detroit area.

It's a pity, too... that AWD system was great, but GM put it behind a 3 speed auto which really hurt its gas mileage and marketability (and performance potential, as the 3 speed was made of tissue paper).

[iXerces]

I sometimes wonder about the production figures as well given how many I have come across in my travels over the years. I think of cars with similar low production numbers (e.g there are apparently ~2500 Z8s in the US, a figure I assume to be about how many iXs might be left after all these years) and how I have only seen a few in my lifetime. I assume however that most cars of the iX's level of rarity are not often on the road like our beasts tend to be.

This weekend a dude on a bike rolled up to my window while I was at a light in Louisville and told me he used to own an '88 iX. We had a nice little conversation before the light turned green. iX'ers be everywhere.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Yeah, Z8's definitely don't accumulate 12-20,000 miles a year.

[cwatt]

I find it funny reading about production number debates; all I keep thinking is that Canada never received the 2-door IX, so any numbers are better than no numbers.

[bradnic]

Sticky this too please

[jeenyus]

I'm curious what the current numbers are for these cars. Like out of the 1715 in 1988, how many of those still exist today?