1991 BMW 850i (#2)

1991 BMW 850i (#2)

I used to buy cars on ebay and out of national magazines from time to time without ever seeing them or driving them. For the most part people are pretty honest, and other than a few instances of someone else's definition of "perfect" being quite different than mine, I've been pleased. Not this time. The idiot in California that sold me this car was just a crook. 

These are some of the pictures I got before buying the car:

I had owned a couple of these 12-cylinder 8-Series Beemers before and loved them. I decided I wanted another one and this is the one I picked after looking for a few months. It was in San Diego and the seller assured me it was in very nice shape. The pictures he sent me seemed to back up his claims on condition.

Here's what I got:

I took this picture right off the delivery truck. I don't care about the dirt and grime, but the thing was junk! There wasn't anything to like about the car.

The rear wing had been drilled and then epoxied to the back, spray painted with something kind of close to the color of the car, and then had the 3rd brake light, which this car didn't have and wasn't hooked up, covered with a marker or something.

The interior was a wreck. I would have needed to basically replace just about everything.

The wheels, which I was told were very nice, were all completely pitted and needed to be re-chromed.

the car would have needed a complete paint job as well. There wasn't a panel on it that I would have been okay with.

The front air dam was a goner. He had just drilled screws into it to hold it together.

This one actually made me laugh. On one of my previous 850's I had painted the manifolds. I had removed them and sent them to a shop to have them powder coated and they looked great. This dude had just tried to spray paint them on the car. 

I tried contacting the guy to discuss the matter, but as you can imagine he didn't answer any of my calls. I thought about actually going to San Diego to "discuss" it with him, but ultimately there isn't much you can do. I could have gotten a judgement against him in Texas easy enough but getting California sheriffs to enforce a judgement from Texas at that time would have been nearly impossible. Ultimately I just parked it in a corner of my garage and it sat there for a couple of years before I put it on Craigslist with a very honest description and sold it for about 1/4 of what I paid. 

After this lesson I swore I would never buy another car "sight unseen". I stuck to that declaration for years.....until this week. We'll see.