What would Bruce Lee do? Be a practical dreamer backed by action, man, he’d remind me. I wasted no time asking to rendezvous at C’s mom’s on Friday, July 28th, at 6:00 PM sharp. The day finally came, and I biked over early in ecstasy and habit, covering the direct path I’d always taken to the car with personal-record speed. Uphill from the final chicane, I was rounding a left when, in truly-perfect synchronized-swim form, the E30 apple of my BMW-roundel eyes rounded the adjacent turn toward me too.
I immediately waved in stunned recognition of the car, biking to the opposite side of the road in order to properly meet the driver, who I figured must obviously be C, and he glided to the stop sign as I froze, save for my swiveling skull and widening astonishment. “Hey! You must be Alex,” C exclaimed, and we shook hands. “I just ran the engine for a bit, and now I’m warming up the car for ya.” I glowed as I took in the much-anticipated sight. “Ahh, so amazing to finally see the car in motion, man!..
But no worries at all, I’ll see you in a few!” I replied, and we both knew we’d meet as planned. He rolled off as I trained my eyes on the departing car. Brake/turn signals work, nothing’s leaking, exhaust’s clear. I whooped and watched as the 325i slipped out of sight, and then listening to the invisibly disembodied bass tone-G-notes burble-crackle-pop away. My god, she’s like my uncle’s E28 M5.
First Impressions of the E30
Momentarily bummed I’d missed out on joining the E30 on her first trip of the day – no, month – sorry, year, I continued moving forward, and swapped my helmet for my private investigator cap. I raced my bike up to the house, leapt off, and figuring I had at least a good minute, inspected the asphalt the car had sat over for at least six months. No leaks, debris, burn marks, or evidence that any such traces were cleaned. One can never be too careful. I police-lined the 100 feet east and west of the parking spot to gratefully confirm it was clean. I reviewed my mental checklist as C emerged at the corner and rumbled contently over. The first part of the car I touched? The passenger mirror, which I untucked so C could park again. We exchanged pleasantries, courtesies and another firm handshake as I requested he pop the hood so I could assess the still-purring I-6. He obligingly pulled the handle, and the clamshell snapped to attention for me to lift.
I took in the prized sight of the E30’s unobstructed M20B25, devoid of cheap engine cover dressing additives, and scanned everything from the intake to the oil pan, eyeing every belt, bolt, fuse, hose, pipe, seal, wire, and inch. Again, no leaks, no cracks, nothing looks abnormal, and everything’s present, I thought, applying all my memories of my uncles’ S38 and M42s, and all the ‘80s-era BMW motors I’d ever seen as my bases. Disguising my scrutiny as wonder, I kept interviewing C about all the work he’d done, as if I were just incredulous and not investigative. C said he’d just recharged the battery (which explained the bamboozled radio begging ‘CODE’); and in autumn, rechecked the valves, spark plugs, ignition coil, topped off all fluids, and replaced the Glacier Freeze (I think, because I politely don’t drink) Gatorade fuse box cover. I ran my fingers over, around, and through anything that could be improperly loose – but the ‘bay area’ passed my initial tests. I then wasted no time in suggesting we both go for a little drive.
Driving Stick for the First Time
Did I mention that I’d never driven stick before, and I’d preferred my new car to have a manual transmission, so I could master the art form on a ride of my own? One with the more engaging, fuel-efficient and unbreakable gearbox option? I also thus wanted the first stick-shift car I drove to be whatever car would be my first. By the way, I knew how to drive stick, having studied my uncles’ driving and their (genuinely) law-abiding giddiness (gas-off, clutch-on, shove/grab-shift, clutch-off, gas-again; all in a half-second) – I’d just not tried it yet, and honestly also didn’t want to try stick-shifting for my first time and risk breaking the car before I could (even decide that I wanted to) buy her. Unsurprisingly, I sure didn’t mention all this to C that day, but he was entirely understanding – he likely figured he’d have nothing to lose, and it probably boded better for him, after all, if his buddy’s car’s buyer wouldn’t be test-driving the E30 in question. So I hopped shotgun, as C relinquished the handbrake, and poked the clutch to slip into first gear. And off we went. Brmbrmbrmbrmbrrrmmmmmmmmbrmbrmbrm. Baritone M20 G notes abound.
Savoring the Drive
The tranquil takeoff of the six-cylinder 325i was, I hereby daresay, lightyears silkier than either inline-four 318is cared for by my uncles, and I say that proudly, having grown up spoiled golden, chauffeured in the pricelessly aureate E30 standard of BMWs created a millennium before I was. Back on Earth, I’d elected to keep the roof up so I could focus on the ride, instead of keeping face and a civil tongue, and so as to not reveal my cards as a wisely prospective buyer. In the passenger seat, I thus wasn’t sitting idly by, and closed both eyes to open my ears. I straddled the transmission tunnel with my my stethoscope palms, and applied my every sense to detect each vibration of air and solid, cross-referencing the data with my (German-)muscle(-car) memory (oh yeah I sure said it) of each row-row-row-your-own E30s and 2002tii of my uncles’, and the youngest’s E92 335is and E28. No strange vibrations, unusual knocks, or screeching… shifts aren’t rubbery but rightfully smooth as should be; nothing is polluting my nostrils, so I can freely snort the addictive ‘80s bison leather. And boy oh boy that aroma! Identical to my uncle’s M5 in sight and smell! “How about that new-car scent, huh?” I smirked at C, who returned my impressed countenance. “Nothin’ new’s made like this today, that’s for sure,” he remarked.
Testing Features and Nostalgia
I slid both my hands up to the gearbox tunnel’s roof to fiddle two at a time with the power(!) window buttons (hey, again, a ‘mid’-level car from the year nineteen-hundred-and-eighty-eight), knowing the tunnel can stir-fry the uncomfortably-close-by wiring. Every window worked quickly and fully, to my delight, confirming their vulnerable electronics were safely unaffected. Floating my hands up from the console, I played the radio and climate-control buttons like they were a multi-tiered ballpark piano/organ, knowing I wouldn’t be able to test the former that day. When asked, C confirmed my theory that the radio clammed up when he pulled the battery, and needed the factory-provided code to unlock it. I have my ways to crack that, but who needs music when your cabrio doesn’t muffle the kerfuffle of a symphonic straight-six? I’ve got all the music playing in my head anywhere and anytime I want, anyway. Oh, remember those days when you had to worry about some jerks heisting not your cellphone out of your car, but your radio? If a radio doesn’t say ‘anti-theft’ because it isn’t, then unlike the thieves, I don’t want it.
The Check Panel’s Charm
The AC and heat didn’t work because of a faulty sensor, C pointed out – a $50ish dollar fix, but I added it to the mental list of things that’d require being changed, could cost any number of dollars and hours to fix if the hiccups turned out to run deeper… and thus could use as a literal bargaining chip on the BMW’s shoulder. And I secretly figured the absence of a roof would serve as my AC, and down jackets and leather driving gloves as my heat. (It’s not like I’d be showing the car what snow or sub-freezing temps are, either.) But ahhh, the heated seats warmed right up! Now to sample the car’s coolest interior feature: all 325, 325e, 325ix, 325is, and 325i E30s came standard with a special six-cylinder-exclusive overhead check panel to translate a diagnostic system that instantly communicates maintenance concerns, should they ever arise, to the driver! Rapidly pressing the check panel’s bottom-right check-button just like a copilot might, each light lit right up, verifying that everything from exterior bulbs to fluid levels, and the check panel’s lights themselves, were all copacetic. If that’s not rad to you, do you not like cars, or something?
Feeling the Thrill
We’d only gone a block and a half, but as much time-flying fun as I was way-too-visibly having, everything outside the car was frozen in reverence. Speaking of the collaborative causes of gravitational relativity, what’s Matt Damon-as-Carroll Shelby’s famous Ford v. Ferrari movie quote? “There’s a point at 7,000 rpm… where everything fades. The machine becomes… weightless. Just disappears. And all that’s left is a body, moving through space and time.” Now, we were only at 2,500 rpm, and our 3,800-lb convertible certainly wasn’t weightless… and though the real Carroll Shelby never actually uttered that stellar line, all the world outside the cutely-boxy body was a silently-stilled stage. I thought that Matt Damon line, too-good-to-be-true as it was, was pretty frickin’ swell, but Steve McQueen, King of Cool, got ‘em beat: “When you’re racing… [looks up to hear a Le Mans prototype racecar go zeeeeerrrrrooommmmm past outside] it’s life. Anything else that happens before or after is just… waiting.”
Go Like Hell
The little BMW (by history’s standards) wasn’t exactly racing – yet – but oh, did she sure seem to be gobbling up the suburbs at 15 mph! Her go-karty chassis, compact-executive dimensions, and squatting frame handled our local manor-wannabe streets with graceful proficiency, as she’d been practicing for the past three decades, and indeed was waiting to really show off. We pulled up to the parkway, turned north onto it, and right then and there, the green flag dropped with the gas pedal. What’d Shelby himself actually say in real life? Oh, that’s right. “Go like hell.”
“Let’s see if the car’ll chirp third,” C knowingly mused. Did he really say what I think? Yes, he did, and C gunned the motor to 3,500 rpm (redline actually is a wickedly gravity-defying 7,000 rpm… says the speedo), rapid-fired the stick-shift, and punched the accelerator, spinning the tires in an ever-so-briefly-fleeting yet humbly-rumbly rolling burnout for ten glorious feet at 30 mph. He bass-drummed the gas, and threw the E30 into a sharp V-shaped left over the double-yellow, rerouting us up a road we’d been passing moments earlier, tires screaming in tickled surprise. As if the hillclimb had begun, or if there was a sport mode to the sport-mood car, the E30 was toeing the checkered-line between test-drive and rally-sport. I’m still shocked we didn’t end up drifting. And at long last, no more forever waiting!
An Unexpected Test of Agility
Seemingly on cue, C quipped to me, “This is the road I use to lose the cops at night,” making an attempt to convince me he was one of those Long Island Expressway street racers performing the 3AM drag show that turns my town into a neighborhood musical production of 2 Fast 2 Furious. I whipped my head to look over at the married mid-50s Orthodox dad, sizing him up, and nodded generously to communicate an air of amused assent. I was curious if he bought it, what he’d think if I ever told him I’m friends with a few police officers at our precinct, and that I know who really highway-races here in Queens. We now floated through a wide right-left S-turn, the E30 tackling the road like we were entering the famously curvy homestretch at Le Mans, nailing the round apexes with minimal body roll and maximal rock-n-roller velocity. The M20 rip-snorted and poured aural greatness through all the lowered windows as fourth gear beckoned us to tag it in, which C did, and we sprang onward toward the next right. Drivetrain was healthy, suspension felt crisp, and, ooh, I forgot to turn off my seat warmer. I was undoubtedly in the hot seat as a pace-car passenger on that warmly brisk July evening. Funnily enough, this was the same twisting street that I’d always take to and from the E30 when I visited her…
We arrived at the exit of the curves and bolted into the small five-way roundabout, the island just serving as another corner for us to conquer. C aimed directly for it, then made a rapid right dash that melted into a left around the roundabout island. I was convinced he was trying to drift the car for our mutual benefit, and was expecting that we indeed would be, and that the tires would break loose, but the E30 dutifully remained grounded as she leapt out of the roundabout and onto an avenue. Don’t you even dare to ask about understeer. Imploring us for even more playfulness, and taunting us with a fourth-gear huuuuuh as if to ask if that was all we had to show off, the car seemed to have reserves of expressive spirit of her own that we had to misbehave to deserve.
The E30 summited the soft hill-peak of the road’s high point, cresting downhill, as we suddenly dove down a right-angle right to a street with a double-black-diamond slope that I approximate to be at an expensively-steep 40 degrees. San Fran-cis-who? We New York City-zens have some venerably veritable mountain streets of our own too. Just as I eagerly prepared myself for us to hurtle down, we detoured onto a more relaxed alternative path. The taste of candy-chicane sweetness sure seemed to bring the swingin’ Laguna Seca blues to my green Queens backyard. That gave C a prime chance to ask me, “So whaddya think?” to which I likely only managed to exclaim in reply with an emotionally-guttural “Ohhhhh-hoh-hohhhhh!” (or was it a “whooooo-hoo-hooohhhhh!”) of weighty consequence. (That’s one detail I can’t remember; I was way too busy with being thoughtlessly speechless at having finally sampled the purity of a classic six-cylinder stick-shift drop-top black/natur E30. And I was merely a passenger!)
We hummed along to the next parkway, approaching the first stop sign we’d come across in that minute-and-a-half along that cartoonishly-serpentine mile, and began heading southward in a far-calmer – nope, now, and purely by coincidence, we’d sped left again, onto my own street. The 325i was definitely now marking its territory all over the NYC speed limit, no matter if C did technically live just over the border in Long Island, and was accustomed to his everyday blissfully-legal 40 mph boulevard cruises. Sans warning again, the straight-six roared to even greater life, rocketing us past another sound barrier as my house came into view, and with another gear-chirp, we hit fifth gear (somehow on a residential street) and zipped away even quicker up the hill than we’d gone down it. I turned my head like a trackside camera trains on a speeding racecar, focusing my eyes on my mom’s Melbourne Red Metallic/Shadow Sport Edition 330i (which I’d specced five years earlier). A reflection in the ’18 F30’s driver-side headlight winked at me as the ’88 E30 completed her flyby. Sure, we were going ‘only’ 50. But – in a sport-compact with those precious go-kart vibes, any speed feels faster than in anything else.
The rest of the test drive was a literal blur, not because C was driving just as fast (though he certainly was), but probably because I knew our current route from my house was leading us on a path back to C’s mom’s… and the return trip from anywhere to your original destination almost always goes by quicker. All the while, the E30 stayed solid, stable, and smooth. I can’t remember what streets we took, nor can I remember how unintelligible I must’ve been, but the only thought I’d had in mind was a truly approving consideration that I could really see myself with this car.
We pulled back up to our original starting point, having completed that 10ish-minute lap around 3.5 miles of NYC/Long Island suburb, and parked back in the very spot that I’d associated with the E30 since January, keeping the motor on at my request. C cranked the handbrake, and now that our ride had come to an end, I took the prime chance to survey a visor-hanging silvery aluminum coin that’d been swinging too hyperactively on its chain for me to view closely during our test-ride. It had the bust of a muscular horse’s head, surrounded by a red and green triangle motif, which C confirmed was indeed a good-luck charm. As I was proudly born in the Chinese zodiac’s year of the horse – 2002 – and was named for Macedonian legend Alexander The Great, I took the Greek trinket to be another favorable omen from the ’88 BMW, and beamed.
“I’ve got to say, it’s quite something that I passed by a few times and looked at this car, and now we’re sitting here,” I shared with C. He nodded, “I firmly believe you just happened to be in the right place, at the right time.” I privately smiled wider. We both climbed out of the E30, and I revisited the deliciously-uncomplicated engine compartment, checking once again to ensure nothing had burned, leaked, or detached itself during our attack on time, public roads, and their protectant speed laws. I turned the car off while C went in his mom’s house to check on her and give me all the time I needed, so I proceeded to reexamine every single panel, button, and stitch of the luxurious interior cabin’s leather-, plastic-, and carpet-covered surfaces; pressed gently on the very-impressively-for-the-’80s kevlar-esque fabric convertible top and tugged forcefully at the fortified-feeling structural frame; and mixed a beat on the authentically-mechanical doors that were oh-so-satisfying to open with metallic clunks and close with titanic clanks.
Exploring Every Inch of the E30
I sat on both sport seats, reconfiguring each operable adjustment, lifting/pressing each handle enabling longitudinal movement, inclination, reclination, thigh support, and the folding seatback/sliding cushion (for rear ingress/egress). In an interior-inspecting mood, I moved on to the trunk, and found the carpet floors and walls to be intact, unworn, and vitally dry. I’d planned to visit the car on this specific day, as it’d rained just heavily all throughout the entire day before, so my inspection would find any evidence of any in-car leaks. Though the port-side tire jack and wheel chock pocket, as well as the (complete!) toolkit were all slightly tinged with tangerine, indicating that moisture had seeped in somehow and somewhere, I searched rigorously and found no fresh presence of water in the cabin, boot, or areas underneath them. Lifting the trunk floor, and with gratitude, I unearthed a gleaming polished bottlecap spare wheel wearing an untouched mint-condition tire! Tucked to the right was a baggie of extra taillight bulbs, wrench sockets, and entertainingly unidentifiable pieces of random electronics. And holy smokes, am I looking at a trunk-mounted 10-track Sony CD player?! That nine-upped the cassette-tape and cleaner device I excavated from the glove compartment. The back-to-the-’80s evening just kept getting cooler.
Rust Review and Final Inspections
While the orange-pink saltwater taffy skies cooled, I moved on to the black-and-silver BBS wheels, fire-truck-red ATE calipers, and sunflower-yellow Bilstein shocks; before giving the iconic E30 body a final close look with the last of the direct evening sunlight. I’d scoured the E30’s front, port, and rear every time I’d visited the car (being the only areas I could legally view with my utmost level of perusal), so I thus focused my exterior attention to the starboard side. The stars appeared above like tested check panel lights, and with them so did my flashlight to scour the underbody with greatest attention. I’d been procrastinating my close-up rust review as long as possible to spare myself any bad news – in retrospect, it would’ve made more sense for me to do that first, as any significant body/frame rot would’ve sadly prevented me from wasting any time. I did side planks underneath all sides and corners of the car, rubbing, knocking, and pulling on every rocker region, jack point, and floor panel in anxious search of repairs, damage, and decay. To my relief, the car seemed as accident-free as C had sworn; and as for the rust I’d eyed with trepidation for months, the majority of it was only a few spots of patinated corrosion, and the outlier erosion was nothing major that couldn’t be addressed with protectant seals.
The Negotiation
I was inside, around, and underneath that BMW until 9:30 that night, checking out everything that could be checked at least three times, and checking again if I hadn’t checked it in the past hour. When any hint of the sun’s redness had vanished from the horizon, C walked out the house and down the driveway, and asked what I thought. Coolly, I answered, “This car certainly checks a lot of boxes.” We stood with our arms folded in admiration and facing the car’s port-side, and just when I figured he was comfortable, I mercilessly hit him with the four-figure question: “Hey, thank you again for this… but it’s quite late – before I go, what’s your buddy asking for her?”
C bent forward, leaning at the E30, and exhaling in contemplation. “Ooh, he’d certainly like to get around, hmm, 12 grand for this car,” he stated. My heart plummeted like the metaphorical green flag on our test-drive – that was nowhere near what I expected, and I let him know with a competitive puff through my clenched teeth. “Phew!.. Oof – geez, I’m going to be really honest with you, I figured you’d say something higher than I was hoping, but I truly swear I wasn’t thinking the number’d be that big. Mmm.” He asked what I’d had in mind, and I immediately gave him some more truth. “Originally, I didn’t think the car had that much recent work done, but with the rocker rust, chipped hood paint, and dents all over, I was genuinely anticipating you’d say like 2 or 3 grand.” I silently winced at having insulted the car, as C audibly did so.
“I can do 4, for sure,” I offered firmly, serving another lowball, and C replied softly, “Ohh, no, no way, no.” So I asked what he thought his friend could do, guessing C might not know. To my amazement, he actually did: “Oh, it’d have to be well in the ballpark, and I do mean ballpark, of… mmm, errrm, 8 grand or so.” My organs rose back to the surface and gulped a gargantuan breath of fresh air. That was one big step for me. “Okay, well, now we’re moving along in the right direction,” I breathed. “Tell ya what,” C said, “you got some time; we don’t need to figure it out right away. So I’ll get on back in touch with him, and I’ll see what we can do. Go home, sleep on it, and we’ll work at it, sounds good?” Sure did. “I would so truly appreciate that,” I agreed in earnest, expressing my gratitude to him once again, and we shook hands for the night.
[Photos by Alexander Hom]
