I have a lot of respect for cars with big miles on the odometer, and for the people who put those miles there. Even more so if those cars are the sort of cars that don’t typically rack up a lot of miles. One of today’s cars you expect to see a lot of miles on, but the other… not so much.
I’m glad to see that the majority of us were in agreement yesterday: a Ford Festiva is a little nugget of awesome, even with an automatic transmission. It didn’t win by a lot; that Mercury Cougar had plenty of fans as well, but win it did. In both cases, a lot of you wanted to make changes: the Cougar fans wanted to up its horsepower, and the Festiva fans were talking about a manual swap.
Between these two, I’d definitely take the Festiva, and I think I’d leave it as an automatic. I’m too old to go mucking around with transmission swaps, especially on a car that’s too old to find in junkyards anymore. I’m sure I could find ways to have fun with that little rollerskate, even without a clutch pedal.
Seeing low-mileage time-capsule cars is kind of cool, but it’s also kind of sad. There’s a lot of potential miles there that never got driven. It seems like kind of a waste. And the cars that are bought as “investments” and squirreled away from day one are even worse. I’d much rather see cars with a ton of miles on them. Cars aren’t meant to be preserved; they’re meant to be enjoyed and used up. These two aren’t quite there yet, but they’ve definitely got some history. Let’s check them out.
1986 BMW 325 – $3,750
Engine/drivetrain: 2.7-liter OHC inline 6, four-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Beaverton, OR
Odometer reading: 281,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well, but needs a few things
Used BMWs have gotten a bad reputation in recent years. They’re fragile, overly-complicated, and difficult and expensive to repair. But if you go back far enough, to say, forty years old, you find a much simpler and more robust machine. The E30-chassis 3 Series is a legend for a reason: it’s not only a great car to drive, but it’s also built like a tank. This isn’t the most miles I’ve seen on one of these cars by a long shot.
This isn’t the most desirable spec E30, but it’s not the worst either. It has the classic M20 inline six, but the low-compression “eta” version, backed by an automatic transmission. Yes, it would be more fun with one of the more rev-happy engines and a manual gearbox, but it’s still going to be an awfully nice car to drive. It has been owned by the same person for 38 years, and they have all the records for it. It currently needs a rear wheel bearing replaced, and it has an “intermittent engine stall,” which sounds ominous. I’d quiz them pretty hard about that one.
My favorite aspect of the interiors of these older BMWs is the fact that everything is oriented towards the driver. The whole center stack is canted towards the driver’s seat. The passenger gets a dash vent and the glovebox, and that’s it. HVAC, stereo, and everything else are all within easy reach of the driver. But that’s all right, because we all know the rule: Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts his cake hole. The air conditioning is a little weak, according to the seller, but the aftermarket Bluetooth stereo works just fine.
It’s rust-free and nice and shiny outside, but it does have some previous damage repaired, on the rear quarter panel. That’s one of the advantages of buying a car from a long-time owner; you know about stuff like that up front, rather than finding out years later when you start poking around.
1986 Chevrolet Corvette – $4,900
Engine/drivetrain: 5.7-liter OHV V8, four-speed automatic, RWD
Location: North Plains, OR
Odometer reading: 255,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives great
The C4 and newer Corvette might hold the record for the most under-used car of all time. They’re not particularly rare, or special, but the majority of owners seem to think they are, and far too many of them baby their cars, or never drive them at all. This yellow C4 is an exception; it has been used for commuting, and has racked up more than a quarter of a million miles in its forty years. That may not sound like a lot to a Toyota Camry driver, but it’s a lot for a Corvette.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to rack up a ton of miles on one of these; at its core, it’s just a Chevy small-block V8 and a Turbo-Hydramatic transmission. The suspension and brakes are a little more complex than your average Caprice, but it’s still just a Chevy. The transmission has been rebuilt, and the seller says everything else is in great shape. It has the Z51 suspension package, so it’s stiffer and has quicker steering than other C4s, which makes the high mileage even more impressive. I’ve never driven a Z51, but a standard C4 Corvette isn’t what you’d call smooth-riding. The seller must have a spine made of iron.
Halfway through the C4’s run, Chevy redesigned the interior, making it more ergonomic but less cool-looking. This one is old enough to have the original interior, complete with a digital instrument panel. It sounds cheesy now, but I cannot tell you how cool we thought that was back in the mid-’80s. The seller says everything works just fine except the power locks, but it’s a two-door. Having to manually lock and unlock the doors isn’t the end of the world.
It’s a little unevenly faded outside, and there are some chips and scrapes, but it doesn’t look too bad. It’s nice to see one of these in a color besides red or white, too. The Z51 package came with special wheels originally, but they’re absent from this car. Instead, it wears the classic C4 “Salad Shooter” wheels, which are fine by me. These are the wheels a Corvette of this era should have.
With a low-mileage car, or a car that has been sitting around for a long time, there are all sorts of things you have to worry about: hardened seals, leaking gaskets, dry-rotted tires, and more. But when a car has been driven a lot, everything tends to stay in better shape. I’d trust either of these more than I would trust a “perfect” example with next to no miles on it. But which one? That’s what you have to decide.
I say this regularly but today I mean it more than usual – if that BMW were closer to where I live I would buy it. ’80s and ’90s BMWs are some of the best looking cars ever made. Yeah, I know it is high mileage. Yeah, I know it probably has mechanical issues. But just look at it. This thing is amazing. I would probably trade my right kidney for it (not my left one, though – every one knows the left kidney is the best kidney) – I can’t believe this can be purchased for only $3750.
and you’d be getting two kidneys back in return…
My left kidney was being weird, nothing a little surgery couldn’t fix, but now I look like a retired bullfighter on my left side.
“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games”.
See, relevant to a automobile site!
Those BMWs are nice, I remember from when they were new. The Vette is a nice shade of yellow, they are pretty easy to fix, and I could put a trailer hitch on it and convince myself it was practical. Showing up at the transfer station with a taxi yellow corvette pulling a trailer would definitely get me “that guy” status at the dump.
Yeah, moon vette.
Tough choice today. Two cars with moon mileage!
A Corvette you can drive the heck out of and enjoy is a good choice. When you go to a car show and other ‘Vette owners are bragging about rare option packages on their trailer queens, you’ll have the 1-of-1 Corvette with a quarter million miles on the clock.
But, I went with the Bimmer because I’ve never experienced one and I like straight-six engines.
Taking that Corvette to a boomer board car show would be great fun.
This one is surprisingly easy for me. My first Bimmer was an ’88 325is with a manual. There’s no way I could handle driving an E30 with the eta engine and an automatic after that. I’ve never owned a Vette, and this one looks like a good starter.
The yellow ‘Vette is one of my childhood dream cars, so I’m not left with independent choice here. Y’all know how this works.
both solid choices, but the lack of stick in the BMW, makes me lean corvette.
Not mentioned, but important That looks to be the glass roof of an optional Targa top on the corvette which makes it the automatic choice!
If the BMW was a manual, it would have swayed my vote.
But given both are slushboxes, the torque of the SBC is the way to go in this case.
Plus I’m gonna guess parts/service will be a little cheaper with the Chevy.
I like the sedan e30 more than the coupe anyway so I’ll go with that and get a nice rust free chassis to do whatever engine/transmission combo I feel like.
Respect for the Supernatural shout out! That show was on so long that I felt like I lost a friend when it ended.
Oh man I loved it when it came out but after season 5 I could not keep watching it, had to give up.
This was a really tough call, but in my heart I am a BMW guy I think. I like the idea of a Vette, but the BMW is a much more daily drivable car, and I need a fun daily a lot more than I need a toy. Granted this vette was obviously used as a commuter, but I have tried it in my Boxster and I think it was a lot more fun when I had a BMW.
I’d rather have the vette — 5k gets you into a lot of C4s though, mileage on a 40 year old car is not a bad thing, keeps everything moving but you can find lower miles and decent shape C4s for about that price…no shortage
I was hoping one of these would be a manual to make the decision easier. So I’m using the idle problem on the Bimmer to eliminate it and going with the Vette. Either one would be a satisfying choice though, except for the lack of a 3rd pedal.
Neither.
BMW: $4K is far to much for an old BMW that needs work.
Corvette: My brother had a Z51 Corvette and the suspension was way too stiff even when I was 20 – let alone the contortions needed to get in and out of one. They also aren’t fast with only 230 hp.
I hear that a small block Chevy slips right into a Corvette.
That could fix the power but not the garbage C4 chassis.
If I was shopping for a Corvette it would be a C5 which was a quantum leap from the C4.
I’ll take the BMW today. I have no desire to replace my entire wardrobe with Corvette themed clothing as I have seen so many Corvette owners at car shows have done. Plus I’m not bald, nor really fat, and I don’t have a blue-haired wife with some silly lap dog.
Stereotype much?!? You left out jorts and white New Balance shoes.
Ya know, breaking stereotypes is one of the pleasurable things in life. Maybe not sex or Franklin’s brisket levels of pleasure, but still quite enjoyable.
That odd juxtaposition reminds me of an old joke…
Woman walks up to a 90-year-old man in a nursing home and asks, “You want some super sex?”
He replies, “I’ll take the soup.”
(I heard it on NPR, so it must be SFW, right?)
That demographic moved on to large SUVs long ago.
Counterpoint: You can be THE Corvette owner that starts an image shift away from all that. Thus, you must buy the Corvette.
Yellow must have been a very uncommon color for the C4, I can’t recall having seen one.
Then again, most C4’s are invisible to me in the first place.
The C4 still gets my vote – an intermittent stall on an automatic-equipped car can be a major issue. Getting to that issue to repair it on a 40+ year old BMW is going to take 2x as long to figure out, and you’re going to accidentally break everything in the way to get to the problem.
There is no universe in which I have any desire for a plastic penis extension. I’m not a ex-Navy Boomer with jorts, New Balances, and an inappropriately young trophy wife.
This is pretty much the worst version of the e30 3-series sold in the US, but I’d still rather have it.
My experience is that inappropriately young women prefer old BMWs to C4s, unless they are from LA, you paint it pink, tell them they remind you of Angeline, and you gift it to them before asking them out.
If they take you seriously it may be trouble.
A quick wander around a Corvette meet here in FL would change your mind on that rather quickly. Though I suspect the car came AFTER the trophy wife, not that the trophy wife was attracted to the car. I feel like the same sorts of gents who trade the wife in for a newer model are the same types who are attracted to plastic penis extensions on wheels.
Well Florida.
Up here in billionaire belt where people hire pr agencies to keep them out of the paper, the BMW would be the subtle coding that the guys following in the G wagon are your employees in case you need a tire change or whatever.
The Vette would be more conspicuously unwashed parked at Hogs & Heifers and “my attorney can take care of it in the morning, where are we going?”
It’s really no different anywhere. Corvettes and BMW owners are two very different groups with not a whole lot of overlap. The billionaire set is going to buy something Porsche or Italian if they want a sports car. Or just multiples of each. That’s what real money really buys, not having to choose.
Also, guess which state has the third highest number of billionaires? Oddly enough (not), it follows the same distribution as most populous states, though presumably Florida and Texas both get a boost from not having state income tax. I am FAR from being a billionaire, and that was a decent chunk of the reason I moved down here.
I could see having a nice BMW 3.0 CSi (E9) for being fancy, and a beater corvette to eat takeout in.
Trying to remember the year BMWs got ugly on the outside and disco on the inside, but e9 are gorgeous.
The e9 is a spectacularly beautiful car. BMW at the height of thier styling power. Which to be fair, has never, ever been a particular strong suite of the company. They mostly did very functionally handsome very, very well, but rarely managed “pretty”. The e9 and the orginal 6-series are really about it for actually pretty BMWs.
The Bangle-mangles really started with the e6X 5 and 7 series around 2001ish. And then the pigsnouts debuted on the FXX cars in 2015ish. The horrible all screens Tokyo-by-night interiors really started with the Gxx cars not so long ago. I actually really like the looks of the FXX 5 and 7, but they were a total letdown to drive compared to the older ones. Then they lost the plot again with the GXX cars, especially the latest pig-snout 7 – eeek. The GXX 5 is decent looking for the moment, at least on the outside. The latest inside sucks.
My e8x and e9x cars were the last BMWs you could get completely sans screens, and still have pretty traditional BMW “cockpit” interiors, if with a bit of silver trim bling I could very much do without. The looks of the 1-series HAVE grown on me, the only really Bangle’d car that has. Techincally he (or his underlings) styled my 3-series, but they never let him mess with the 3 the way he did with the rest of the line. No screwing around so much with the bread and butter of the company.
I’ve also always been fond of the BMW Bavaria, which was essentially the sedan version. I haven’t seen one in years, I think most didn’t survive the depreciated luxury car death zone.
The best Mercedes and BMWs are the ones designed by Paul Braque. Both brands squandered their identity afterwords.
Same here – and I very much agree.
I’ve had eight or nine BMWs, but, like these two, I’m about to turn 40, and maybe that’s when the switch flips because I’m going Corvette. Like, I almost legitimately want it. I could probably even get my spouse onboard (he likes C4s), and my father-in-law, who’s a major Corvette guy with the white New Blanaces to prove it, would be over the moon.
Well, If I can’t have both, I’ll take the BMW. The Corvette is awesome, but the interior is just terribly ugly. (My opinion, if you disagree, that’s fine.) Since I’m going to be inside the car, I’ll enjoy the BMW more.
I certainly appreciate the 3-series from that era, but the yellow ‘vette is calling my name. I don’t care that it offers pedestrian performance in the modern era, the unloved C4 is the ‘vette that hit at the same time as my love for cars in general. Parts are not a problem, and my local garage can handle anything that I can’t. They also sound sooooo damned cool – a low, resonant rumble, not what you get from a modern performance car (a sound akin to a steel drum filled with angry beavers)
I was NOT ready to think this hard this morning. I saw the pics on the headline and my brain just went “Son of a bitch…” and I clicked hoping one would be a potential basket case. Neither was. Here is my dilemma:
I owned a 1989 BMW 318is (two door, black interior, manual, sun roof, charcoal exterior), but it turns out the block was cracked, so that was a break even $400 car. It gave me the itch though! I loved that little BMW and felt supremely cool in it. This one is not as fun, but it does have the DNA of greatness in it AND it is practical (I have a kid in a car seat, that backseat would be clutch) AND it would look swell pulling up to my office at a historic New England college (an old BMW screams mildly pretentious academia). Plus, the price is very good.
I’ve never owned or even driven a Corvette which feels like a crime considering the things I have driven. The C4 here is undeniably cool and satisfies something primal (and probably mulleted) from my redneck past. It is not practical at all, I would be physically aged every single commute (the bumps are bad enough in my highly practical Tiguan), there is no room for my kiddo, and I live in a major city where parallel parking is the most common parking set-up. It is the wrong choice in every single way…but look at it! The wheels, the hood opening, the obnoxious yellow (there are not nearly enough unapologetically yellow cars anymore), the V8!
I’d go BMW. A well documented and loved BMW for over a thousand dollars less with more seating would give me significantly more smiles because I’d drive it longer, more often, and with my family in tow.
I second this comment. We could use some bright orange as well.
Love the goofiness of having the headlights pointed at you when looking under the hood. The fact that these flipped nearly 180 degrees from back to front instead of just popping up the 90 like every other pop up headlight does just makes me laugh.
My first thought as well. I feel like I’m being supervised by the car as I wrench on the car…
Better hope you don’t screw it up!
On WW2 Jeeps, that was a feature – you could flip the headlights 180 degrees and turn them on to illuminate the engine compartment for nighttime repairs.
Interesting. Makes sense for a car like that for sure though
For my own use, I would go with the Vette. If it’s mostly working, it should be a fun summer toy for relatively short money. Also, if the engine finally does go, it’s a Chevy 350, and good replacements are easy to source. Or build.
For resale, I would go BMW because a rust free example would go for a premium in my neck of the woods.
Z5-anything Chevy is an automatic “Shut up and take my money!” They stem from the time when GM owned the major stake in Lotus and pulled their engineers in to spend some time on refining Chevy’s own suspension and handling efforts.
I don’t recall the Z51 ‘Vette as really riding any harder than a normal C4 — but it did have a reputation for having sharp-edged enough handling that it could scare the pants off of unprepared drivers. With power output above a regular C4 plus quick handling and an ability to stay planted at speed, it’s said to have upped the pucker factor to exploring its limits.
Nowadays, modern tire compounds and shocks are likely to tame the harshness a bit in ways that weren’t possible when the car was new.
I gotta go with the BMW, I’ve actually worked on other examples, and they are very easy to maintain, and I don’t have to play the who stays home today game, as it has back seats.
As I kid I really loved the C4 when it came out, but I my SO has very negative things to say about them in general, and while she probably loves me enough to tolerate me having one, I’d find another hill to die on. Plus no back seats, and most of my driving involves at least two passengers. I do love the sawblade wheels though, maybe I’d out a set on the BMW to ruin it….
Build wise, I’d just keep the little red BMW running maybe find some better seats that don’t need covers on them, just little piecemeal jobs to slowly make it better.
BMW for me. I’m a huge fan of C4s but if I’m getting one it’s from the post facelift and with a manual.
This is a tough one for me. I’m a BMW fan going back to the 90’s and I have owned an E30 before. (1989 325ix) If the sheet metal is as good as it looks, this one would be a fun project car. Swap a manual into it and slap a 325i head and engine management on it and you have a great driver.
I’ve never been a Vette fan, but in this case call me Vette-curious. Assuming it’s still structurally sound, this might be a fun project. Clean it up and fix any of the gremlins and drive it for the summer. Then sell it on and probably break even.
Both interesting choices, but I’ve already had an E30. I’ll take the Vette.