So how did u find your E30??

[MikeE30325i]

craigslist.

[delatlanta1281]

Kinda boring...

Prior to buying my car I had been searching the southeast for two years and my buddy had shot me down on @6 candidates before.
I was driving down a main road in Ga and passed a "tow the note" car dealer. I saw my soon to be car and pulled in. It had good paint and no rust, so I test drove it. It needed a suspension bad, but ran well so I went back and asked if I could take it to my mechanic to put it on a rack. He said ok and I drove it 30 miles to my buddy's shop. It checked out ok, besides the suspension it was leaking from the oil filter housing and the interior was pretty beat up (go figure!). My buddy asked me if it was the car I wanted and I said yes (this was around the 7th e30 I hade brought to him. He told me to buy it if I liked the color and we would begin work.
I went back to the dealer and told him about the suspension problems, then bargianed him down from 3800 to 2800 out the door. He accepted and I got my dad to come pick up the car with me.
I then tore the bitch apart and redid everything but the head, not because it needed it, because I wanted to.
Knowing what I know now, 2800 is kinda high, but screw it. If I had passed on my car I wouldn't have near what I have now!

[shiraz]

I found mine randomly when i was in the bmw mechanic's shop talking to them about a lot attendant/office job there. although i may have found another (younger, better) one now so i might be selling my baby :(

E30isGIRL...another girl! yaaayyy :D

[BMW BMXER]

still got it? what'd you end up paying if you dont mind?

bmxer -is that the concrete mississauga park that opened a year or two back? never made my way down there. how is it?

yea i can see oakville being too tight for bikes, but i always see a million of them whenever I'm there

bastards with no brakes tailwhip out of that little miniramp/snakerun thing right onto the platform where everyone's standing, all day long, lol. till the cops come and they scatter

The mississauga park is pretty good. But same deal cops come and we have to get out for fear of a 265 dollar ticket.

[Ray Smoodiver]

Craigs List

Whoa whoa whoa lagoon green iS? Tell me more!

[crunk3]

Craigs List

[Erick]

My 325i, the one pictured in the sig, was purchased by my father in 1989.

My first personal e30, the black '90 325i, was purchased in the autotrader (although the owner was a BMW CCA member and all that).

Then my parts car was purchased through Roadfly.

My 4th e30, the 318i, was purchased through r3v.

And now I got everything I salvaged from most cars and poured it into the first one, which has been officially mine since I retired the black 325i.

- Erick

[B0ND]

Found mine after searching for a few weeks on every medium I could find: Craigslist, Ebay, Forums, Roadfly, BMWCCA, eyes open, etc. I live in Socal so there were quite a few cars out there. Eventually found my 89 325i, Royalblau 5-speed with 183k miles. Paid $3400 and loving it so far. Only had it a week and I just keep putting money in for tools (didn't have much to begin with) and miscelaneous parts. Just ordered some tires, soon going to get a Z3 1.9 SSK, new brake pads, flush brake fluid, coolant flush, hoping to redo suspension soon too...gotta love the E30 modding bug :)

[CleanAzzE30z]

My ///M3 from the Roundel.

My 325e my father got new in 1986. :)

Mariano

[optimusp517]

Found my from 2 hard month's of searching on craiglist, forums, autotrader, and newspaper. Finally found one close to where I live and it was from a tech shop. The owner was a really good friend with the original previous owner who passed away. Vehicle was from AZ and came up here cause the wifey wanted to have the shop owner sell it for them especially since her husband passed away which is no use to her no more. It was previously owned by a tech foreman so I know it was in good hands :)

Picked it up for $3900 OTD with 170k

[AdironRider]

Found mine last November on e30tech. Paid 4200. 318is, 76k at the time, mint condition, rebuilt title.

[E30isGIRL]

Welcome to r3v Wagonizzle.... Great stories! :D

[neighborhood]

I was talking to an employee at slick motorsports in cleveland about possibly trading my Audi for his E30 plus cash about two months ago. Last week, the Audi was T-boned and totaled. Well, hell! I want an E30, so I got ahold of the guy and bought the 87 325is from him yesterday.

[loonibab325i]

I registered for this forum after reading your these stories so I could tell mine. I had been looking at e30's for about a year and a half, never with any money to actually buy one. I was delivering pizza one night in May when I saw a lady get out of a zinno 325i at a house I went to for delivery (not her house). I promptly asked her if she was going to call me when she was ready to sell it. She laughed and said she was actually thinking about getting something with more doors, but that she loved the BMW so much, it would be hard to get rid of it. When I asked what she might want for it, she said, "I don't know, two?" I left her my number and hatched a plan.
Two weeks later I knocked on her door to see if she as serious (she lived a mile from where I first met her). We talked for about 30 minutes and she said she would start looking for something else. I asked her to let me know when the last time the timing belt had been changed was. We communicated a bit over the next couple months, me trying to help her decide what to buy next. During one conversation, she explained that although it was perfect when she bought it in 1996 with 60k, she hit a rock that fell off a truck on the highway 2 weeks later. It put a hole in the block and she had over $9k in work done including a rebuilt engine and steering rack. She hoped I wouldn't be deterred by this. Oh, she checked and the timing belt and water pump were changed 5k ago. The car had 113,500 miles at this point and had gotten over $5k in work in the last 5k miles. Tires were good. Exhaust good. AC cold. Radiator and cat replaced. recent full tune up. Black interior was great. Mtech 1 wheel and rear spoiler.
While I was on vacation in NC, she called me to tell me she found a car and would be buying it on August 17th. A week before this day, I drove the car for the first time. I had noticed that it seemed to to sit low, so I wondered about the condition of the suspension. It was fine. Car ran great and had been serviced by my friend's shop, so we knew maintenance was up to date. I told her that KBB online says the car is worth $1850, but if it all checked out, I would give her the asking price of "I don't know, two?". She mulled it over and decided that since the stereo was busted and it had a goofy temp gauge, she was going to sell it to me for $1800. And tell the state that the purchase price is $200 so I can save tax. I decide that I am ok with that.
The day she bought her new used CR-V, I met her at the tag place and got the BMW at the same time. Along with the keys (and a hug), she gave me some paperwork from the previous owner. "Something about a suspension chip, I don't know what that's for," the newest previous owner tells me. I read a letter explaining that there are Bilstien shocks, springs, sway bars and bushings on the car, as well as a Dinan chip. Oh joy. You know what's funny? She was pretty little, kinda old, and I don't know if she only took it to church on sundays, but at 5k miles in the last 2 years, it's possible. Every time I drive this car I am more impressed. I look forward to many years with it. Hope you enjoyed my story.

Good story, pm me some pics of your car I'm interisted to see. If you post them here i'm sure i'll forget to read this thread again lol..

I found mine on the local newspapers, well not me jajou318 did, anyways.. my story isn't all that interisting.. I was just so excited about getting my first car I knew this car was the one.. he was asking about 4k worked him all the way down to 2700!

[rede30]

Nothing to special but i did get lucky with my first car. I was planning on staying in Carmel with my Aunt and Uncle to work for them and try to find a car during the summer of 2003. I had just under two weeks to find a car while i was at there house: I was wanting to find it up there because my uncle was someone i trusted to help me find a good car since i didnt know anything during this time. We had been checking every online classifieds and anything else we could think of to try and find a car but we couldnt find anything close to what i wanted. It came time when i only had two days before i left the area and i would miss out having my uncle help me find a clean car. We were checking autotrader pretty very often but after we checked one time we were desperate so we up'ed the radius way more than we had been searching with just to see what was out there. We were going through all the cars when we see a perfect car, we assume it would be really far away since we were looking way outside of our driving radius but it just so happens that we notice it was only 5 miles away. We couldnt believe it since just 5 min earlier we had searched close by and saw nothing so we get on the phone and then got in the car and went to look at it. It was perfect and the guy had just posted it on autotrader somthing like 30 min before we called and it was suposed to take a few hours to show up. We were the first call and we bought the car for 3000 around an hour after he posted it up. It did only take me under 2 weeks to find a perfect car but it still felt like it would never happen. I bought my 2nd car from my brother so there really isnt a story there and i am working on getting my 3rd...