Increasing (theoretical) resale value.

[reelizmpro]

Clean body, original panels, clean title, refreshed with tasteful mods fetch a good penny. However, its been proven that people will pay even more for highly modded cars. Just depends on the mods and as long as it looks clean. Take a pos e30 and drop in an s52 and it will still fetch a premium.

[ak-]

Clean and refreshed always nets more proportionally to a clean and modded car.

[KenC]

CLEAN body/interior and minimal mods.

[rustybullet]

A clean well taken car will always fetch more.

[mikeb23ft]

What are the biggest things you would do to an E30 to increase resale value? I've been watching a lot of the British show Wheeler Dealers lately and they buy cars, fix them up, and sell them. I'm not about to do that given my limited funds and mechanical ability, just an interesting topic.

Take my '88 325is for example. It's mechanically sound. If I were to do bodywork on it, I think that it would be worth substantially more on the resale market if I swapped it to Euro or late bumpers instead of just respraying it with the diving boards on. On the contrary, if I cobbled together a turbo kit for the high mileage M20 or put some XXRs on it, I would probably negatively impact the resale value of the car compared to the cost of the turbo kit or wheels. What other features make an E30 pull a premium?