Is this Cardinal Red interior?

[dudem3]

I just picked up a non running 1987 325is for $800 bucks, pretty sure the problem is the fuel pump, it's not the timing belt, but haven't had time to diagnose yet. I've never had an e30 with this color interior and want to know if this interior color is 28 year old faded cardinal red. Thanks.

[mucoyekul87ETA]

Check out this link. That should indeed be cardinal.

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=104955

[dudem3]

Thanks, I've seen that chart on the internet and cardinal is the only logical choice, but it just looks so brown in it's faded form.

[rcsoundn1]

i think cardinal red

[phreshkid]

Looks more like oxblood than cardinalrot

[xxla81xx]

Yup not Cardinal

[flyboyx]

i vote on oxblood. normally cardinal cars had red door pulls and the oxblood cars got black. the colors are pretty close though. oxblood is a tiny bit darker. in my 91ix i had an oxblood driver's seat and the passenger was cardinal. you could tell the colors were a little different, but it wasn't very noticeable.

[dudem3]

What you are calling oxblood, is that the taurusrot that is listed in the color chart under the 1986 colors? It does look more like that color than the cardinal and this is an early 1987 car, 03/87. So since taurusrot isn't listed under the 1987 colors it seems possible they could have used a 1986 color on an early car like this one.

[101]

Run the full blown VIN decoder:

http://www.bmwarchive.org/vin/bmw-vin-decoder.html (English)

It will give you the interior color code and you can use the charts from the post above to be sure.

But yeah, it sure looks just like my '87 eS Cardinal interior. Black door pulls and all.

[phreshkid]

What you are calling oxblood, is that the taurusrot that is listed in the color chart under the 1986 colors? It does look more like that color than the cardinal and this is an early 1987 car, 03/87. So since taurusrot isn't listed under the 1987 colors it seems possible they could have used a 1986 color on an early car like this one.

You know, I just had an epiphany.


We call it oxblood, but I never understood why. The word taurus has something to do with the ox (part of the cow family), and though my zodiac sign is Pisces, Taurus is but another sign (and also a bull with horns, just like the ox) but I never put two and two together.
So oxblood is the english way of saying taurusrot.

Unless I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about, which is perfectly plausible as I am not well-equipped to use my brain at high levels.

[dudem3]

According to the vin decoder, the interior color code is 0203, which is black, so seats and door cards were changed at some point after manufacture. Oh well, thanks for the help.

[Wschnitz]

looks like my 87 "cardinal" interior. But its not cardinal, cardinal is a more red color. I believe some of the early model cars got oxblood or taurusrot interiors but got labeled as cardinal in the US

[rob-redm]

saw plenty of interior swap back in the day when these cars were brand new.

[downforce22]

its definitely taurus red. you can tell by the white stitching in the seats. Look at my 86 iX with taurus and black door pulls.

[1843lamp]

I just found this post ,I bought a mid 86 325es and have wondered about the color being so far off to my eye from Cardinal red ,but I had somewhat excepted the theory that the interior had just faded over time but the rear seat has hardly ever been used and even under the edges it is the same darker color,a darker more brownish color make more sense...I just looked at the site with all of the interior samples ,what I noticed is the samples for Cardinal red seem to vary from year to year it may be possible that Cardinal red color varied .