We have a habit of surfing Autotrader.com for cars late at night, finding cars we don’t necessarily need—but absolutely must have. Our 2004 BMW 325i wagon has been serving us well for the past year, but we decided that a later model E90 might be a fun upgrade. The wagon’s value has actually increased in the past year, making the sale very painless—we sold our green wagon in less than 24 hours online.
With cash in hand, we started searching for early E90s, figuring they were the best value. When we kept finding cars with more miles than our current E46, we expanded our search to some later model years and came across a 1-year-old 328i in nearby Jacksonville with a staggering 57,000 miles. While that’s a lot for a 1-year-old car, it was still less than comparably priced older cars. The kicker was that it was a low-option car with a stickshift transmission and no sunroof—a rare combination that we prefer.
We drove up to Jacksonville on a Saturday and took the car for a drive. Aside from some noise from half-worn front tires, the car drove, looked and smelled brand new. It was simply in stunning shape. We wound up purchasing it for under $25,000—some $5000 off normal book value for this late model car. Even considering that the mileage deduction would be typically $1500, we made out like bandits.
Our plan for the car is to upgrade a few simple things and autocross it when we have the chance. SCCA is experimenting with street-tire classing for nearly-stock cars, and we plan on using this car for RTR, which stands for Road Tire, Rear-wheel drive. It should be quite competent there.
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