All good car restorations and upgrades begin with a solid story, and this one is no exception! We begin this with a fateful evening of scrolling the Facebook when I came across an old family friend's ad selling his '98 M3 with 395k miles. I commented on the post tagging my son's mom about what a fun first car this would make for him (he was 15 at the time and about to get his license in a year), however as fate would have it she was at work and had stumbled on the same listing and sent me a message as I tagged her. So we ended up with a crazy high mileage, needed some work and rust repair, but otherwise decent shape '98 M3 for crazy inexpensive. At this point I would not have considered myself a "car guy", as I didn't own any cars for any reason other than utility.
This began a very fun project between my son and I working on that M3, doing mods here and there, installing a kick-ass custom audio system (a hobby of mine since college), refinished that sweet carbon hood, then ended up sanding out all the surface rust on the body and wrapped the car. It turned out awesome and that car meant everything to my son. We had a very high emotional investment as it was something we shared to get through some otherwise difficult years of family turmoil, then of course the 'rona.
Unfortunately about a month ago he was out driving on the highway, it was a little slick, and the person in the lane next to him decided to drift into his lane. They ended up bumping his car just slightly, he lost control trying to correct, and hit the concrete highway divider hard, twice in fact, and that car will never be the same. Of course the most important thing is that he was Ok, uninjured, and no one else was hurt. The front end is way out of square, the rear end is creased and crumpled pretty bad, and despite any body shop's best efforts that car will never be straight again.
The good news is that the engine, transmission, and interior still intact, unharmed, and there's a lot to this car that still have value, both emotionally and $$. We decided to begin looking for an E30 to swap this engine into, transfer over whatever other parts we could, and allow his prized possession to live on a bit in a new form. After putting out feelers, talking to everyone we know locally in our BMW community, we eventually found this car below!
So here's our new project! It's an '89 325 with a whole bunch of aftermarket parts (and wheels), and a half-completed M50 engine swap. It came with a boatload of extra parts, wheels, transmissions, odds & ends.
This began a very fun project between my son and I working on that M3, doing mods here and there, installing a kick-ass custom audio system (a hobby of mine since college), refinished that sweet carbon hood, then ended up sanding out all the surface rust on the body and wrapped the car. It turned out awesome and that car meant everything to my son. We had a very high emotional investment as it was something we shared to get through some otherwise difficult years of family turmoil, then of course the 'rona.
Unfortunately about a month ago he was out driving on the highway, it was a little slick, and the person in the lane next to him decided to drift into his lane. They ended up bumping his car just slightly, he lost control trying to correct, and hit the concrete highway divider hard, twice in fact, and that car will never be the same. Of course the most important thing is that he was Ok, uninjured, and no one else was hurt. The front end is way out of square, the rear end is creased and crumpled pretty bad, and despite any body shop's best efforts that car will never be straight again.
The good news is that the engine, transmission, and interior still intact, unharmed, and there's a lot to this car that still have value, both emotionally and $$. We decided to begin looking for an E30 to swap this engine into, transfer over whatever other parts we could, and allow his prized possession to live on a bit in a new form. After putting out feelers, talking to everyone we know locally in our BMW community, we eventually found this car below!
So here's our new project! It's an '89 325 with a whole bunch of aftermarket parts (and wheels), and a half-completed M50 engine swap. It came with a boatload of extra parts, wheels, transmissions, odds & ends.
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