My dream car in high school, even before I could drive without an adult sitting in the right seat, was a brand-new BMW M3. At the time, “brand-new” meant sometime between 2009 and 2012, the era of the V8-powered M3. Known to gearheads by its chassis codes—E90 for the sedan, E92 for the coupe, and E93 for the convertible—it felt like the perfect blend between daily driver and corner-carving weapon, with slick looks, a manual transmission, and an 8,500-rpm redline.
As it turns out, this was not a unique opinion. People realizing BMW will never make another V8-powered 3-Series means the E9x M3 platform has held its value pretty well in the 13 or so years since production ended. Even well-used cars with over 100,000 miles regularly sell for over $30,000, depending on spec.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the second-hand market for years now, hoping one day I might scrape together enough money to purchase a nice, low-mileage M3 for myself. But going by this most recent auction result, I suspect I might never get the chance. I say that because a normal production M3, not a limited edition model or even an example painted in a rare color, just sold for over $200,000 at auction on Bring a Trailer.
Why Did This M3 Go For New Supercar Money?
Seeing what appears to be a normal-ass M3 go for nearly triple its original MSRP is pretty jarring, but honestly, it shouldn’t be too surprising for people who know the market. First off, this particular M3 is essentially a new car. It’s been driven just 725 miles since it came off the factory line, and it looks as if it just rolled off the dealership floor in 2010. It’s also incredibly well-specced, with a manual transmission, carbon fiber interior trim, and the optional Competition package, which nets a lower ride height, revised electronic dampers, a different stability control setup, and a set of lovely 19-inch alloy wheels (Style 359s for you BMW nerds).
Just as important to this M3’s value are the options it doesn’t have. Importantly, it wasn’t specced with navigation, which means it didn’t get the iDrive infotainment display embedded into the dashboard. That means instead of a “double-hump” shaped dash, it has a cleaner, more simplified “single-hump” setup in the cabin, which buyers usually prefer. The sunroof was also left off the option list, which means this M3 retained its highly desirable carbon-fiber roof panel (if you option a sunroof, that panel is replaced by a piece of steel and glass).
Still, $205,000 is a lot of money for one of these cars. I’d understand more if it were a special, rare BMW Individual color like Dakar Yellow, a rare Lime Rock Park edition, or one of those late-production M3s painted in a matte “frozen” color. But aside from the mileage, there isn’t anything incredibly special about this car. Yet it’s just shattered the record for E9x M3s on Bring a Trailer by a wide margin. The next most expensive car to sell on the platform was this orange-painted example modified to resemble the Euro-only M3 GTS, complete with a bigger engine, a roll cage, and all the right aero pieces. It went for $133,000 in 2022.
If you’re curious, the most expensive E9x M3 to sell at auction in America is a 229-mile Lime Rock Park edition, which went for $235,000 at a Gooding & Co. auction held during Pebble Beach in 2022. The most valuable E9x M3 worldwide, however, goes to the first production M3 GTS, which sold for €301,700 (around $351,000 at the time), including buyer’s fees at an RM Sotheby’s auction in Munich last year.
Will M3s Ever Come Down In Price?
Based on this sale alone, you might think the values for V8-powered M3s are trending upward as more people realize this car delivers a unique experience you can’t really find elsewhere. But going by Bring a Trailer’s sales history graph, values have roughly remained steady, save for a few outliers like the car above.
To me, what this sales result shows is that nice versions of even normal E9x M3s are now solidly acquiring collector car status. This trend has been building for some time now—all you have to do is look at the inventory for specialty used car dealer Enthusiast Auto Group to see that. Anomaly or not, this $205k sale means owners of similar low-mileage cars can justify raising their prices. For normal people like me, who hoped that maybe one day, the V8 M3 would slowly depreciate enough to become attainable, it feels like that reality is slowly slipping away from their grasp.
This sale doesn’t mean every E9x is about to double in price, obviously. In my countless hours of browsing Facebook Marketplace, I’ve found that BMWs often have particularly huge deltas in price for collector-quality examples and normal, used, high-mileage cars. The E9x is just one example. While this one above sold for over $200,000, you can easily buy a high-mileage M3 convertible with a dual-clutch for a tenth of that price right now.
While I wouldn’t be against settling for a high-mileage car to live my fantasies, the M3 is one of those cases where if I’m spending nearly $30,000 on a used car, I’d want it not to be a clapped-out shitbox with nearly 200,000 miles. Examples with reasonable mileage are simply too far out of reach, and I have a feeling, thanks in part to this recent sale, that they’ll always be slightly more expensive than I’ll be able to afford. Such is life.
Top graphic image: Bring a Trailer
BaT is simply a money laundering enabling operation, and doesn’t at all reflect actual values of anything it sells. It’s a complete joke. I wouldn’t get disheartened.
As a mechanic said to me recently noticing my car clearly has been driven:
<sage node> ”Tools, not jewels.”
These engines had a nice crescendo, induction note, and exhaust note. Really awkward clutch engagement though, with “OK” shift action.
This will go to someone who wants to continue to bubble it. Drivers are reasonable.
Though having added a C63 AMG (6.2L V8, 507HP/450lb-ft) to the garage as a “normie car”, these cars I wanted so much when I was 20 years younger… I now view more like a fun Camry. Proper angry sports cars are a lot more fun, and I’m glad I mostly went towards them, to leave “sport sedans” as “dailies that can make you smile.”
A few month ago at Nice Airport one of the car rental gave me a M3 for the week… (business trip, so I didn’t pay, and it was not the category that had been booked, it was a massive category jump)
Honestly, I was more impressed by the Mégane e-tech I got to drive a few months before that. (again rented car for work)
For the record : my most massive upgrade on rented car was for personal use, I had booked a Twingo as I only had to fetch a few crates of bottles of wine 30ish km away, and transporting them through the Parisian subway system is suboptimal.
Inbstead of the expected Twingo, I ended up with a Grand Scenic with all the options you can dream of (including gear shifting on paddles behind the wheel)
This is just silly. That car has sat it’s entire life, which won’t have done it many favors. Realistically, there are plenty of minty 40-60K mile examples out there for far more realistic prices. Or buy a higher mileage car, budget for what it will inevitably need, and don’t worry about actually driving it and ruining it’s value. This one is not a car at this point, it’s an objet d’art.
I would actually say this car is pretty special in it’s spec. It’s just how I would have ordered one other than the black on black lack of color scheme. Yuck, and so boring, when BMW offered so many great exterior AND interior colors in that era.
Also – EAG tends to have really, really, nice cars at really, really, really stiff prices. They are the BaT of auto dealers. That said, I missed buying the nicest and by far the most expensive e88 135i convertible in the country from them 6 years ago by about 5 minutes. I called 10 minutes before they opened the first business day after they listed it, and it was gone already. Probably dodged a bullet there by buying my 128i convertible instead, which has been as reliable as death and taxes. But it would have been fun!
Sad that the car was not used and enjoyed. I hate that cars have become investments and not enjoyable transportation.
I mean my understanding of the E90 M3 was that even if you could afford one you couldn’t afford one; just like its big brother M5.
I had a six-speed E60 M5 for a few years and weirdly it was one of the most reliable cars I’ve owned (“reliable” being relative, of course)
hmmm. In my neighborhood is an early 00s, AMG C class Mercedes. It’s bit sitting for as long as I remember and actually looks like it would look ok after a bath. Wonder what’s wrong with it and how expensive it would be to fix up and get on BaT….
I had one of these (sedan version) when it was new, in stripperish format. It was nice, but not worth its MSRP when loaded into base 911 level. At that time a base Carrera 2S was in the low 80s.
“Euro-only M3 GTS”
I drove one of those once! We had one in for benchmarking, and no body else wanted to risk reversing it out of the workshop, so the most junior person in the room got the keys.
I only got to reverse it, then someone much more important kicked me out.
Gutted.
still technically counts!
What would General McAuliffe say?
A properly maintained high mileage E9x M3 is nothing to worry about. And have usually hovered around 25k, maybe a little less. There’s one running around the Bay Area with 384k miles on it, purchased with 353K miles with an unopened original engine, and a number of others pushing 170/180k miles. Maintenance goes a long way, and giving the engine about ten minutes to warm up on a cold start. Ignore the mileage, enjoy the car, seriously, one of the most incredible cars I’ve ever owned.
It may be a great car, but that selling price is pure Crack Pipe to me.
Incompetent attempt at money laundering?
BaT isn’t real sales much anymore on these mega dollar low mile cars. It’s either sellers shilling on their own auction or some other scam. The latest one is dealer A bids on his buddy dealer B’s car for way more than market value. They actually pay the fees and it appears the car sold for big money. But the car never actually changes hands. They established a new value for the car. Then sell to dealer C who lists it at that value. For example if the fees are $5k but it raised the value of the car $20k it’s a win. You can figure this one out by carfaxing the VIN.
I saw the Rennsport blog about that with the Porsches and the BaT auctions. Pretty shady. Just pumpin up values. funny thing was the guy who did the research was tracking cars by VINs, and some posters didn’t believe him.
While I realize this was an outlier (where else are you going to find a a sub-100 mile V8 M3 with that kind of spec?), it’s sort of a “what’s the point?” car. Meaning:
-the first owner bought ‘the Ultimate Driving Machine’…and proceeded to not drive it, unless you count the 725 miles.So in addition to paying all the money they did back then for this spec, they barely got to use it.Obviously they had the means, but that’s beside the point.
-next owner purchases it for $205k. Again, much of the value is tied into the sub-1000k miles on this.They have the money to buy it, but probably wouldn’t drive it, not only to avoid the risk of damage, but further devaluation.
You can invest $200k multiple ways, and get a far better yield than speculating on the future cost of this. So again, what’s the point?
This is for the person who wants to own the best E90 in the world and doesn’t care what it costs. The comment below about a decoration is not far from the truth.
I simply do not understand these low mileage cars that go for crazy money, I recall semi recently this car, an STI, an Evo, all low mileage but not really special editions or anything selling for 6 figures. What are these for? You can’t drive them, even putting a few thousand miles on them brings them much closer to what they would sell for with a normal amount of miles, and that’s saying nothing of what may need refreshed or changed from just sitting there all these years. This just seems like an expensive M3 shaped decoration.
For a certain segment of the population (the ones who can afford $205k 15 year old cars) that’s exactly what they want it to be. It’ll slot in nicely with the other cars in the collection while they continue driving around in their Urus or whatever.
Correct. This is not a world any of us live in or truly understand, but it is a world that nonetheless exists.
I do think the lack of nav and sunroof in a way puts this into exceptionally rare territory. I remember E46’s had some rare sort of base configurations that were akin to it being a CSL – like manual seats or something.
So this great driver’s car won’t be driven. It would cost a fortune to replace the tires/Belts/fuel lines/brake lines/any other rubber which has most likely rotted or become unusable, and every mile dings the value. What a sad waste. I hate “collectors cars” that won’t be driven. What’s the point? Buy a 3d cutout.