Rare parts for E34's don't come up often, especially interior parts. I bought a 1995 BMW 540i6 M Sport with a black interior in 2013 and ever since I bought the car, I wanted the dark M Hurricane/alcantara interior for it. This interior is not easy to come by in the states as it wasn't offered here to my knowledge. The people that do have these interiors imported them or had someone deal with importing these interiors. The Canadian M540i was offered with these interiors but only 32 of those were produced and not all of them came with this interior. I spent the better part of five years looking for this interior.
In September 2016, a perfect condition dark M Hurricane/alcantara interior popped up on Bimmerforums. Included was manual heated front seats, rear seats, rear headrests, and door panels. An extra pair of front door panels were also included. Needless to say, I message the seller and got a response. I didn't hear from the seller again so I assumed I missed out and they were sold. Turned out, a deposit was put on them but they were never picked up. Fast forward to August 2017, I see them listed again. I message the seller asking about the availability and start planning on how I would pick them up. I start receiving messages from a buddy that put the deposit on them. He offered to sell me the interior but ended up having car trouble on the way there and wasn't able to pick them up. The seller came back with a stellar price (lower than what he originally listed them for) and I started making plans to leave Friday night after work. I borrowed the company work van since my Fusion wouldn't have enough room for everything. The only thing I did not like about borrowing the company van was that it says 'marine electronics' on it which really means 'rob me' to some people. Luckily I did not run into any problems with that.
I left Friday night at 10pm from the Lake Lanier area. I still hit traffic on I75 North in Marietta. I got to Chicago (Arlington Heights area) around 11:30am my time. I stopped for gas, food, and an hour of sleep (I didn't really sleep because a Ford Transit is not comfortable at all to sleep in). Indiana absolutely sucked to drive thru, it seemed that state would never end. Louisville was a cool town to drive through even though I drove through there in the middle of the night. Tennessee made the Transit work going up some of those hills. The large wind mills were cool since I have never seen those before. The seller is a doctor and was called into his office for an emergency appointment so I hung out with some friends in the Prospect Heights area until the seller was available. I had a blast hanging out so waiting didn't seem like a long time even though it was around four hours if I remember correctly.
I finally meet up with the seller around 4pm my time with my friends with me. The interior looked even better in person than it did in the pictures. I was instantly sold. The seller was also a BMW enthusiast with a lot of cool stuff. He gave us a tour of his parts collection and showed us around his garage. He has an E36 M3 LTW race car, E36 325i M tech with an S54, and a 1990 Z1. He offered to let me take the Z1 for a cruise which I accepted. It was a very well balanced car even if it was a little slow. The Z1 handled very nice.
I'm still running off about an hour of sleep at this point (around 5pm my time).
My friends had to leave for family stuff but I stuck around and chatted for a few minutes after that. We got everything loaded in the back of the Transit and I leaft for Atlanta around 6:30pm my time. I stopped for gas and food at one of the highway overpass "Oasis'" that cross the highway. My buddy wanted to meet at one of these oasis' and I immediately thought it was a strip club because there is a strip club in Atlanta named the Oasis. Oops.
I stopped in Tennessee to sleep and managed to sleep for about two hours this time. I made it home a little before 9am on Sunday morning. My wife and kids were waiting for me (I do not like leaving home without them but there wasn't enough room for everyone) so I was happy to see them up. My little one was happy I was home finally. I didn't go to sleep when I got home. I had the seats installed by 1pm and inserts for the door panels removed from the old door panels (they were delaminating) and prepped for my door panels. I also cleaned the Transit up (wash and interior cleaning) since there were dead bugs all over the front of it.
I didn't go to bed until around midnight on Sunday and was a walking zombie at work the next day.
Worth it.
The car it all went in
