E36 M3 vert?

Found a clean vert near me w/100K miles for a reasonable asking price (10K). Car is clean, but is missing records. It was at a minimum taken care of in the appearance department....I can find no touch ups/bodywork/paint at all, and it's super clean.

How do they stack up against the hardtops? Anything to be leary of with the soft top/open close mechanism?

Seller also has the optional hard top available....a worthwhile purchase here in the south (Atl) ?

The coupe/sedans I'm finding are around the same money, with 150-180K miles on them. So I'm comparing this one to those.

The vert is a 98 car if that matters.

Thanks GRM!

Price is a bit high, my 99 with 89k on it came in around 7.5k Same deal, well cared for, cosmetically beautiful, no records.

The tops can have issues, there is a layer between the headliner and top that will have disintegrated by now and will be raining down crud at random intervals if it hasnt all been replaced already. The header seals may be worn by this time, they are very expensive to replace. The elastic straps which pull the support bows in place with the top tend to wear out over time and you need to either guide them up by hand while its coming up or down or replace them. The cables which guide the rear c-pillar fillers in place can break and the fillers themselves are know to break as well, overall one of the easier repairs I had to do on the top though.

Unless it's SUPER clean, it's probably priced on the high end. 'Verts are generally considered less desirable than coupes/sedans. I'm having a hard time getting $5k for my low mile mechanically sound but cosmetically challenged M3 convertible..YMMV.

My searches around here generally turn up three verts for every coupe, and they generally have fewer miles. I've gotten the convertible thing out of my system, but I've thought about doing one up with a cage and a hardtop.

Sounds like I should keep looking then. I did find this here in Atlanta, but the seller won't return a phone call. I need to find better places to look, all I'm finding are high mileage verts with automatics!

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/cto/3112964675.html

I know those CCW's are about 2500 a set, and the suspension wasn't cheap either, so maybe offering 10K for it is reasonable?

TAftonomos wrote: I need to find better places to look, all I'm finding are high mileage verts with automatics!

http://www.bimmerforums.com/

The other benefit of Bimmerforums is that at least 5 people will beat down the seller on price before you even get a chance to look at the thread...