Oh boy. This could end really badly for someone.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1971-bmw-3-0csi-2/
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1971-bmw-3-0csi-2/
71 CSi Project in BaT
- Thread starter JayWltrs
- Start date
“My dad’s a television repair man, he’s got the ultimate set of tools. We can fix it!
You can’t fix this, Spicoli!
[Looks out the window while taking a hit]
I can fix it!”
You can’t fix this, Spicoli!
[Looks out the window while taking a hit]
I can fix it!”
seems like this has been shown a couple times before which didnt sell
I've said this before but you can laugh now but in the not too distant future people will kick themselves for not grabbing this at the right price.
Demand only has to stay the same for the price paid for coupes of all conditions to continue to rise on account of limited supply. The same is true for many parts.
It may differ a bit in the US but you can't find a decent CSi for under 100k in Australia. If I say this for around 10k AUD I'd seriously consider it as for a savvy restorer you've plenty of head room for a quality restoration and profit.
Just my five cents worth.
Demand only has to stay the same for the price paid for coupes of all conditions to continue to rise on account of limited supply. The same is true for many parts.
It may differ a bit in the US but you can't find a decent CSi for under 100k in Australia. If I say this for around 10k AUD I'd seriously consider it as for a savvy restorer you've plenty of head room for a quality restoration and profit.
Just my five cents worth.
Rek
Active Member
Your advice is worth more than 5 cents. If prices continue rising, then these cars will be bought back from the dead.
Mine was in worse condition than this but I was not daunted as I have a bodywork guy who was economic and good. That was the key to doing mine on a realistic budget. I am sure that this car will live again and everyone will think the buyer got a bargain.
This car needs new (NLA) inner fenders. They look like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, not just the shock tower area either. The rear inner wheel wells have patch panels welded in them. It needs front firewall work near the A-pillar on the passenger side. It includes new outer edges of the fender boxes from W&N, so assume they are shot. Given the firewall damage, and fender box damage, you can assume that the lower a-pillar needs to be rebuilt. Given that it is a sunroof car and the nature of the inner fender, you can assume that the front rocker area is shot. The tail panel has been cut, and welded, then cut. All four fender corners are missing also. W&N has patch panels for the fender arches, and most of this stuff for that matter. They don't have full inner fenders, but they do have the tops.
There are numerous body differences that make the CSI unique and this car shows many of them You can see the fuel filter bracket on the battery tray. You can see the airbox bracket. You can see the fuel lines running down the driver's side, and the wires going to external the pump. The car has km/h gauges, and shows no sign of 80's federalization on the fenders either. It also has a euro fog cutout. There are some other key features that aren't visible due to missing pics. D-Jet parts are present, including the TB and the Map sensor on the (early) brake booster. Airbox is in the spare parts bin. If I was buying in, I'd also want to see a pic of the brain under the rear passenger seat. Also, you should expect to see holes where the floor pan meets the subframe pickup. You can see evidence of this on the outside in one of the floor pan pics.
It looks like the car was put on a lift and kinked the center. That is an illusion due to the doors not having the strikers installed. The doors are pushed in too far creating the illusion.
This car has the exact same rust patterns that my parts car had, which isn't some overall trend. It looks to me that this car was driven quite a bit (in the rain), and didn't sit parked in the rain. My project car sat in the rain and it develops rust in different areas. Much less damage to the fender areas, much more damage to the lower windshield frames., plus water sitting on the floor pans causing the "drain plugs" to rust out.
There are numerous body differences that make the CSI unique and this car shows many of them You can see the fuel filter bracket on the battery tray. You can see the airbox bracket. You can see the fuel lines running down the driver's side, and the wires going to external the pump. The car has km/h gauges, and shows no sign of 80's federalization on the fenders either. It also has a euro fog cutout. There are some other key features that aren't visible due to missing pics. D-Jet parts are present, including the TB and the Map sensor on the (early) brake booster. Airbox is in the spare parts bin. If I was buying in, I'd also want to see a pic of the brain under the rear passenger seat. Also, you should expect to see holes where the floor pan meets the subframe pickup. You can see evidence of this on the outside in one of the floor pan pics.
It looks like the car was put on a lift and kinked the center. That is an illusion due to the doors not having the strikers installed. The doors are pushed in too far creating the illusion.
This car has the exact same rust patterns that my parts car had, which isn't some overall trend. It looks to me that this car was driven quite a bit (in the rain), and didn't sit parked in the rain. My project car sat in the rain and it develops rust in different areas. Much less damage to the fender areas, much more damage to the lower windshield frames., plus water sitting on the floor pans causing the "drain plugs" to rust out.
So that’s about $70k US. I’m throwing this out there more to see what others think than proclaiming I know the truth. But I still don’t see this car being economical for a long time in the US. My sense is top US shops wouldn’t touch it for less than $100k to get it to a $70k car. Might be $150k to get it to a $100k+ car. We saw with @scottevest the type of creep and problems which can occur with unfamiliar shops doing much more basic work on his good condition car. You’d need mad skills & lots of time or ship it to Hungary. In addition to what Markos so ably recounts, every part of the car needs to be touched and some of the parts they do show, like the mirrors, are wrong or unusable. Tough to judge how much of the engine & interior are salvageable. I think there are better cars at BHCC to use as a starting point which would save you $20-$30k in the long run. If it were a CSL, it would make sense all day long, but I don’t think being a CSi bumps it up enough to make it up in the US, at least for the foreseeable future.
Agreed that it is a tough road and nobody can fault someone for sacrificing this one. Taking mine part however, I realized how saveable it is. It is an exercise in saving a car. Technically you could end up with a better car for the money, but the risk “seem” much higher. In reality though, for folks with cash on hand, buying a known turd is less risky than buying a $80K+ car that looks nice on the outside. Even @Dan Mooney has found rust while gently dissecting parts of his gorgeous CSI. It’s always somewhere. You just have to have big cojones to kick off a checkbook restoration with a starting point like this. Finding one in similar condition with better inner fenders would be a good alternative.
Don’t part it out! Yeah I did it but someone cut off the firewall VIN. Even if it was restored it still had a black eye.
Don’t part it out! Yeah I did it but someone cut off the firewall VIN. Even if it was restored it still had a black eye.
CSteve
Well-Known Member
Terrific guys. This is like two surgeons, Dr. Mark and Dr. Jay, debating about a patient in hospice with bone cancer that has matastasized to every organ in the poor devil's body. To paraphrase Dr. Jay, "I still don't see this patient having any chance of living unless there are Star Trek like advances in medicine."Agreed that it is a tough road and nobody can fault someone for sacrificing this one. Taking mine part however, I realized how saveable it is. It is an exercise in saving a car. Technically you could end up with a better car for the money, but the risk “seem” much higher. In reality though, for folks with cash on hand, buying a known turd is less risky than buying a $80K+ car that looks nice on the outside. Even @Dan Mooney has found rust while gently dissecting parts of his gorgeous CSI. It’s always somewhere. You just have to have big cojones to kick off a checkbook restoration with a starting point like this. Finding one in similar condition with better inner fenders would be a good alternative.
Don’t part it out! Yeah I did it but someone cut off the firewall VIN. Even if it was restored it still had a black eye.
Yes, but I bid on it, so I'm an optimist.
The issue w/these E9s are, you can spend $40k on one and it's going to probably need a lot of body work as well.
Crusty cars like this BAT car can definitely be saved, but with sheetmetal that requires HAND-FORMING because the part is not reproduced anywhere, the restoration skyrockets.
They all need to be saved, but average restoration costs of $75k, is just not feasible for most buyers.
Crusty cars like this BAT car can definitely be saved, but with sheetmetal that requires HAND-FORMING because the part is not reproduced anywhere, the restoration skyrockets.
They all need to be saved, but average restoration costs of $75k, is just not feasible for most buyers.
Rek
Active Member
I will take bets that this car will survive and be restored. Sending it to a 'shop' and paying for their overheads and profit is not the only way to restore a car.
That's what I was saying, probably didn't make it clear. An owner/restorer with could probably make the numbers work on this.
Simply dropping it off at a restorers and letting them handle it all it probably wouldn't work.
Plan B would be to buy it cheap, keep it dry and wait a year or two and re-list.
Said it before but if I was in the UK or US I'd be stockpiling coupes and parts if I could.
Simply dropping it off at a restorers and letting them handle it all it probably wouldn't work.
Plan B would be to buy it cheap, keep it dry and wait a year or two and re-list.
Said it before but if I was in the UK or US I'd be stockpiling coupes and parts if I could.
Belgiumbarry
Well-Known Member
Interesting. My observations obviously have a very Australian flair. Over here E9s are quite rare in any condition compared to 911s, which you practically trip over.
That said there was a point a few months back where I think there were 10 for sale here in varying condition. Mind you that's for a population of more than 20 million.
I still think regardless of where you are there is some business sense in buying up cars like this at the right price and simply putting them into storage. I expect CSL and CSi prices to see good growth going forward, provided no GFC 2.0. This in turn drags up the CS variants.
It's hard to say without actually looking at the car in question but a skilled owner/restorer could probably bring that car back and make some dollars off the back.
Different story if you sent it to a restorer.
Without challenging Wes's knowledge of his local market I can say that Hagerty Insurance agrees with you Barry, that European prices have reached an immediate peak. Their valuations of RHD City Pack CSLs are down 4% from last year.
https://www.hagertyinsurance.co.uk/classiccarvalue
We should all remember that there is no such thing as a market that rises forever. One problem is that market cycles can be long and many market participants have never experienced a 'correction'. The London property market is currently undergoing a correction.
I recall that classic car prices rose sharply in the late 1980s but fell drastically in the early nineties. Someone with proper records would be able to clarify the statistics. Anecdotally I remember that asking prices of £500,000 for Ferrari Daytonas in the late 1980s fell by 75% in a couple of years.
One other sobering aspect in Europe is the increasingly influential 'green' movement. I have a V8 M3 which is a car with dirty emissions and I pay accordingly in terms of a high rate of road tax - not to mention less than 20mpg.
God help us if Iranian relations deteriorate and fuel prices rise further - currently £1.34 per litre or about £6 (Euro 6.60 or $8) per gallon.
I suspect all three of us are right in a manner of speaking. The main difference as I see it is out here is the low number of cars in the first place probably inflates the price relative to the US/UK. Somebody on here might even have an idea on how many E9s are actually out here. Only guessing but suspect it only numbers 100-200, probably closer to 100.
I've been looking for 3.0 CSi for about a year and I have to say that Hagerty's valuations of CSis is currently low. Does that mean the market is reaching a peak? possibly but the reality is that in order to buy a good RHD (!), solid, original, rust free car in the UK, I'm looking at paying what Hagerty suggest is a "Concours" price as opposed to "Excellent"!
Good afternoon Michael
I am sure you are right. I also believe that, having looked at many cars, you will have a better idea of the immediate market than a dis-interested insurer.
I agree that the CSL prices also look low. The term 'concours' is, of course, also open to interpretation.
The point of my contribution was simply to point out that not every observer sees an ever-upward trend in prices. If the Hagerty methodology is consistent one year to the next then perhaps they have identified a trend.
However it is also possible that too few cars are sold each year to make a meaningful market. They provide the following general guidance -
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Belgiumbarry
Well-Known Member
Michael, isn't this the difference between "asking" prices and deals in reality ? Of course we only see asking prices and never know the reality until we make a bid and discuss with seller….