Seattle: '74 CS (edit: previously $24K)

Got several PM's on this but haven't heard from the seller yet. I finally looked at the pics. I think we had some rough examples but this certainly looks the most promising $20K car that has been posted this year.

The car has front spacers, and the VIN plate is missing. No elephant skins in back.
 
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Hi Folks,

I had a number of members reach out. I stopped by over lunch and covered what I could in the short time that I had. The car fires up great but I didn’t have time to maneuver it out of the garage and drive. It was on a lift, which helps tremendously. I think the car will sell at/near the asking price. If you just want to drive it and ignore the flaws I think you could get away with it, as it seems to be structurally sound. If you want to fully restore the car, you probably aren’t starting at a better point than any number of the 15K cars that we’ve seen. The engine bay, inner rockers look good. I was a bit taken back by the ’74 internals above the front tires, as it is quite a bit different from my ’71. There are no splash guards in place. The car was undercoated at some point in its life, so some flaws may be hiding. If you blasted the car, I guarantee that you would find bondo on the front end. The back end seems relatively untouched, but the rear rockers are in trouble. With that said, I don’t think that you could find the same starting point for $15K. I think you might find an equivalent or better car for $24K if given enough time and willingness to act *quick.

The seller (mechanic) doesn’t seem to want to tinker with the price or run a silent auction. He convinced the owner to finally sell it as it had been sitting.


I took quite a few pictures but can’t post at the moment. The seller updated the CL ad to include more underside pics. Also, the VIN plate is on the car, just way high up, not where I would have expected it. Could be ignorance on my part.

Here is the run down:

Structural:
The driver’s rocker needs repair/replacement by the rear wheel
Typical poor jack placement on passenger front pan.
Both front floor pan plugs require replacement and repair of the surrounding area.
Tire well looks good. Edit: Center support tube rusting out from underneath.
Rear shock towers look good
Undercoating, but no holes in the rear fender wells
Jack points seem solid
Frame rails look good
Undercoating, but rear floor pan seams (see Peter C’s video) appear sound
Didn’t check the diff mount for visible cracks
I didn’t have time to pull the rear seats and the leather is very brittle


Paint – Disclaimer, my digital paint gauge was $20 on amazon. I strive for relatiivity, based on the roof as a starting point:
Mediocre. 10’ job. It looks very fresh and shiny. Definitely has some orange peel. At least one noticeable drip near the passenger mirror location. Some very minor flaking by the trunk button. Visible missed spot (minor) on the inside trunk lip (not visible from outside).
Picking up .4mm on the roof, this was my baseline. By comparison, my parts CSI is .2mm with a respray
Likely bondo on upper fenders near windshield, especially on the passenger side. Reading .8mm.
Lower fenders reading about .8mm. No sign of patchwork from the back side of the fender.
Lower quarter panels behind doors seem good, unremarkable numbers on the paint gauge

Other:
Front seats recovered.
Rear seats very brittle
Wood – sand and stain without veneer
Steering wheels was nice
Steering column not flaking
Needs carpet
The truck was pretty clean overall.
The car smelled very dry, no visible moisture problems anywhere.
Not sure what the deal is with the AC interior vent (with odd pull and aircraft style toggle switch). This car has no AC anything in the engine bay.
The AC vent was undoubtedly cut for a single din radio.
I paid no attention to the tires, factory wheels look decent.
I forgot to check the VIN on the block/head.


Interesting:
Backdated wood steering wheel
CSL kidneys? These appear to be black plastic, unpainted (5 slat).
Weber linkages have some non-standard parts on them, not sure what's going on there.

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A 74 has black kidney slats, four each side, earlier cars had five each side. I've never seen such puffy front seat backs, reminds me of the Seinfeld puffy shirt episode!
 
HB Chris said:
A 74 has black kidney slats, four each side, earlier cars had five each side. I've never seen such puffy front seat backs, reminds me of the Seinfeld puffy shirt episode!
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"But I don't want to be a pirate!" :D

This grill has five slats. It is possible that it's painted but they seemed like plastic.
 
btw I accidentally left my paint gauge there if anyone wants to try it...
 
Had to take the drive from Portland and looked at the car

In today's market he will get the asking price or close to it.
He has an offer on the car although he was unwilling to decide on any offer below the asking price. The owner was out of town at the moment and he was not willing to contact the owner unless it was a full price offer.
In the end, I was unable to bring myself to pay $24500 for the car.
There is rust. All towers and wheel wells look in good shape.
The under carriage of the car was sprayed with some type of coating at some point and it is obvious there is rust lurking. The paint is 10+ years old based on my conversation. Meaning the under carriage was likely sprayed over ten years ago.
Completely stock drive train; but looks to be in reasonable and good running condition.
The pan and rockers are shot.
The shop owner is very honest and in my opinion, not a salesman. I am confident he is just trying to help out a long term client sell the car for a reasonable price. I bet it is sold already or will be be sold in the next day or two.
A 'reasonable' price is an entirely subjective question.
Whoever buys the car for this price should not go through buyers remorse and just drive the car. Enjoy it! Just spend the $$$'s need to get rid of the sucky bumpers.
If the plan is to tear it down there may be betters deals for this kind of restoration.
It will still get the same of higher price in 5 years.
 
gdub0717 said:
In today's market he will get the asking price or close to it.
He has an offer on the car although he was unwilling to decide on any offer below the asking price. The owner was out of town at the moment and he was not willing to contact the owner unless it was a full price offer.
In the end, I was unable to bring myself to pay $24500 for the car.
There is rust. All towers and wheel wells look in good shape.
The under carriage of the car was sprayed with some type of coating at some point and it is obvious there is rust lurking. The paint is 10+ years old based on my conversation. Meaning the under carriage was likely sprayed over ten years ago.
Completely stock drive train; but looks to be in reasonable and good running condition.
The pan and rockers are shot.
The shop owner is very honest and in my opinion, not a salesman. I am confident he is just trying to help out a long term client sell the car for a reasonable price. I bet it is sold already or will be be sold in the next day or two.
A 'reasonable' price is an entirely subjective question.
Whoever buys the car for this price should not go through buyers remorse and just drive the car. Enjoy it! Just spend the $$$'s need to get rid of the sucky bumpers.
If the plan is to tear it down there may be betters deals for this kind of restoration.
It will still get the same of higher price in 5 years.
Click to expand...

We both saw the car and our observations are in lock step. The difference is that I didn't have $24K on the line. I can empathize with this dilemma.
 
Hi Folks,

Chris sent me an email in response to this thread. I generally agree with the sentiment in his response.

As far as value, the market will dictate that. I don't doubt that he will sell it for no less than $20K. The Portland car (which hasn't sold in 30 days) is priced lower with documented rust and trashed interior. Factor in $3,000 for leather, $700 for carpet, $1,000 for dashboard wood and you get back to the low 20's. The Ebay car seemed like a better deal as Teahead mentioned, but we didn't didn't have multiple members inspect that car with a fine toothed comb.

I let Chris know that this forum tends to pick on rusty cars. I think it's a general reaction to the rising prices and the inability to get a nice rust free CS driver for $20K. Nobody wants to be priced out of the cars we love.

From Chris - The euro mechanic, not the owner:
I was unable to post on the e9 forum, but did have a response to the thread posted there, not sure if you want to post it or not:

As someone who restores cars for a living I must say that I find the comments on this vehicle to be odd.

“I guess the owner of this car drove it in the rain” I would be beyond amazed to find any 42 year old car that had not been driven in the rain, and to my knowledge the present owner has never driven the car in the rain and it has been stored indoors for at least the past 10 years.

A link to a car on ebay which had identical floor pans which sold for $22 which had warped door cards, non-original air cleaners, and needed a complete repaint.

The $20 paint gauge I tried on a freshly painted 280SL with just over $35k in metal and paint work showed 1mm differences over a 4” section of the front fender where the backside could clearly be seen and felt and reflected no such variations. I guess you get what you pay for there. A side note, after wildly varying readings I tried to retest it this morning using several plastic thickness gauges and found that the battery was too low to take a measurement…

Something about puffy seats. Do a google image search for “BMW 3.0CS seats” and you will see that other than sacked out seats all the 3.0’s had these same seats. The comment seems quite nit-picking IMHO as someone who deals with vintage cars all day, every day.

Lastly I am a bit surprised by the comments regarding rockers on this thread. The vehicle is 42 years old and none of the rust is on a structural component. There is some rust in the rear of the drivers side rocker and two small areas on the forward floor pans, both small patch repairs at best. The rear rocker section is also a relatively small area and a patch repair. All the pieces are available to do these repairs and the rocker itself is covered by trim. I have seen far more extensive repairs performed on VW bugs and 911’s without a second thought. In face rocker panel and floor section replacement are a general assumption on any 911 under $40k.

The E9, and the CS in particular is the iconic BMW, they are listed in the 10 most beautiful cars of all time and really anyone should be proud to own such an icon of car design. Even being a Porsche guy myself, I have to say that the 3.0CS is a far les common and therefore more striking vehicle.

At this price point and rarity we are not discussing tarting up a Honda or slapping some fender flares on a Nissan here, we are, or should be, discussing owning and restoring a piece of automotive history. These are big boy toys and vehicles which are on the precipice of a value spike about to follow the early 911’s which in the past 5 years shot from the low 20’s to 120 and up. Frankly if I had the space to store another car, a 3.0CS would be on the list.

This car is a nice driver which presents well, it needs some minor rust repair, a rear seat recovering and some general piece by piece restoration, really it’s only downfall is that it was not originally a black car. That said, I would take a repaint over a brown car any day. My point is; Let’s not be petty or unrealistic, the car is fairly priced, from 1973 to 1975 they only made 393 of these cars for the US market, these vehicles are rarified air and those lucky enough to own one are lucky. Let’s not lower the standing of the enthusiasts for these beautiful cars with petty quips and pointless comments. Groups like this should embrace being charged with the stewardship of these classics
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For me rust is the deal killer. I would rather spend the money on mechanicals or interior than on expensive body work. This one looked so promising.
 
I like how this guy minimizes the rust so much.

99% of the time, the rust you see is only a small part of the actual rust lurking elsewhere.

"big boy toys"? Umm...does that justify spending big boy money on a rot box?
 
gotta look at it

this might be a bargain in a couple of years- would it cost 25K to make her a 50K car.. the way prices are going? Just saying-
 
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