1973 BMW 3.0CS

Coupe

6 - Cyl.

Manual

2250545

Gasoline

1973 BMW 3.0CS NO RESERVE AUCTION 89,886 Probably Original Miles Pretty, Shiny Tundra (green) Metallic Base Coat / Clear Coat Paint 4-Speed with A/C Euro Look (no side markers) Runs and Drives Well Not Rust-Free, But Lots of Miles and Smiles Before Hard Choices Ridiculously Thorough Incredibly Honest Description with 160 High-Res Photos and Nine Videos -- You Will Know What It Is You're Buying Hi. I'm Rob Siegel. For 25 years I've written the column "The Hack Mechanic" for BMW CCA Roundel Magazine. That doesn't mean I know more than you do, but it does mean you can trust me to be straight up with you about this car. I'm not someone who makes a living off E9s (not that there's anything wrong with that). I'm just a guy who likes cool cars he can get into at prices that don't break the family's budget. I've had six E9s, including a 3.0CSi I've owned for over 25 years. I know a fair amount about where they rust. I'm going to share that information with you. And, both because of my presence in Roundel Magazine, and because it's just who I am, I would never try to represent a car as something it isn't. My wife accuses me of trying to frighten off buyers. That's never my direct intent. I just like to sleep well at night. Plus, When those of us who know these cars (or 2002s) can size one up in 30 seconds, I've never understood why people obfuscate. And, from a purely enlightened self-interest standpoint, when everyone knows these cars rust, by describing the condition of the car as thoroughly as possible, it reduces risk for the bidder, which increases the number of bids. Pretty, shiny E9s are routinely proffered and purchased on eBay without the seller describing or presenting a single photo of the rust-sensitive areas. If you've been watching eBay, you're probaby aware that several E9s have recently closed with winning bids, but several weeks later the cars are back on eBay. I can only assume that is because the buyers found something unexpected they didn't like. That shouldn't happen here, because I am going to go into a VERY high level of detail on my car. My advice to anyone looking at any E9 (or any car, really) is that, if there's not direct evidence a car is rust-free in the sensitive areas, you should assume it isn't. If it sounds like I am on a personal mission to eliminate these unethical ads from eBay, I am. Even if I don't get as much for this car as I'd like, at least I can shame the sheysters. SUMMARY So let's talk about the car. I'm about to go into a numbing level of detail with 160 high-res pics and ten videos, so let's not miss the forest for the trees. This is a pretty, decently-driving 1973 3.0CS. It was originally Polaris (silver) but was repainted metallic Tundra (deep green, almost a jade) in a base coat / clear coat finish. The Tundra paint is shiny and reflective; you can see reflections of the sky and the trees in the photos below. The engine runs strong. It has dual Weber carbs that seem well-adjusted; the car starts right up, idles, and kicks down. It pulls strongly through all gears. I am NOT presenting this as a car I personally have thoroughly sorted out and would drive a thousand miles, but other than the rattles present in any unrestored 38 year old car, there's nothing obviously wrong with it. Other than a rip in the driver's seat (concealed beneath a seat cover) and some peeling and cracking of the wood trim, the interior is very presentable. The car does have some rust -- the worst of which is a good-sized hole in the passenger floorboard -- but as the previous owner said, "it has great bones." The rear shock towers, frame rails and firewall all look excellent to me. The front shock towers have no apparent rust holes, but there is some rust bubbling visible at the edges of the insulating material. I know a guy who would probably grind the rust off the outer body, patch the perforations, and squirt paint on it for $1500, and I could probably make more money on the car if I did that, but it's the wrong thing for me to do for this car. I'm just its foster parent. That decision should be made by the next owner, not me. You can always make the argument that it's better to spend money up front and buy the best car you possibly can, but that's an argument for people who have the money to spend. When I was 25 and wanting an affordable 3.0CS so bad I'd lock myself in a dark room and wait for the pain to pass, I would've killed for this car. The phrase "drive as is or restore" is a well-worn one, but I think it applies particularly well to this car. This would be a great first E9 for someone. I don't know how high the bidding will go, but it is not going to be a $10k car. If you go into this car with eyes open and don't try to turn it into something that it's not, for short money, you can get into a pretty, shiny, decently-driving, air-conditioned, non-rust-bucket 3.0CS which, if kept dry, will give you miles of smiles before hard choices need to be made. HISTORY According to BMW's records, this BMW 3.0CS, US VIN 2250545, was manufactured on April 1st, 1973 and delivered on April 19th, 1973 to New York City. The original color was Polaris metallic, paint code 060. It was repainted Tundra (green) several owners ago. It looks to me like it had a high-quality all-trim-off glass-out repaint. The insides of the doors, door jams, and trunk were resprayed. In addition to the repaint, at some point the side markers were deleted. This gives the car the clean uncluttered look of an unfederalized Euro CSi. The car was originally an automatic, professionally converted to a 4-speed in 2000 by the late great Jim Albright's Mighty Motors. I'm looking at the receipt for that conversion for $1479.80. I have a stack of receipts from two previous owners as far back as 1998. I bought the car from an enthusiast in Boston who'd bought it as his dream car in 2004 and spent a fair chunk of change keeping up with it, including replacing the head gasket and redoing the cooling system (as well as rust repair; see below) but eventually had to allocate his time and money to a newly-purchased house. He parked it in his garage which was dusty but dry. The car is wearing a 2009 Massachusetts inspection sticker issued 1/26/2008, so it was off the road for no more than four years. When he sold it to me, he told me it had a problem with the brakes and thus couldn't be driven. With a jump, it started right up. I limped it into a borrowed trailer and took it home. I did some light sorting out, fixed what needed to be fixed, updated the bolt-on-the-bottom oil canister with later bolt-on-the-top one from an E28 M30 engine so oil doesn't run down your arm when you change the oil, and changed the fluids in the car -- oil, brake fluid, and Redline for the differential and gearbox. I did not flush the antifreeze. The car had major cooling system work before it went into storage. An antifreeze flush can hide a leaking head gasket (oil in the antifreeze). The antifreeze looks good, and is exactly how I found it. Because the car had been kept dry, I initially didn't want to get it wet by washing it, so I gave it two sponge baths to get the dust and dirt off. After these pics were taken, I did consent to give it a full wash, and now it looks even better than in these photos. Below are basic walk-around pics. You can see, from the reflections of the ground, trees, and shy, how shiny the paint is. Be aware, when scrolling through this entire description, there is descriptive text intersperced between pictures, so don't scroll too fast. Links to four walk-around videos are below. They were shot with an inexpensive point-and-shoot at an hour of day where there's lots of glare, so you can see the shine on the paint but you can't get a good sense of how deep and rich the Tundra green is. video 1 video 2 video 3 video 4 video 5 Below are four videos of the car running. start after dead cold for a week drive out of the garage in-car video driving around the block revving up to 5000rpm shot of tailpipe showing no smoke Below are some under hood shots. BRIGHTWORK The chrome and other metal on this car is very, very good. The front bumper is shiny and dent-free, with only very minor pitting in the chrome. The rear bumper and rubber have two small indentations. The long pieces of the front grilles are nearly perfect; the kidneys have a few small dings along the circumference. The trim at the base of the windows displays the usual small discoloration and pitting, but the beltline trim and mirros are somewhere between very good and excellent. Often, if you paint a car, you wind up replacing all the trim because the old trim looks terrible against the new paint, but I don't think you'd be sucked down that rabbit hole here. INTERIOR The interior of the car is nice though a bit uneven. The vinyl part of the dash is in excellent condition, with one small crack located forward of the instrument cluster; you have to look through the windshield to see it. The veneer is peeling off the wood dash at both corners. The two wood strips on the doors are missing sections of veneer. The two wood strips in the back are nearly perfect. It has a Momo wood wheel that is not my personal taste but that matches the wood trim extremely well. The Autoflug seat belts, complete with ceiling-mounted shoulder harnesses, are in excellent condition. The driver's seat bottom is beat up. There are obvious rips in the vinyl upholstery of the seat bottom, revealing the springs and horsehair. The back part of the seat and the brightwork are excellent, though. To cover up the torn seat bottom, I've temporarily installed an inexpensive one-piece seat cover -- one piece meaning it is meant to cover both the bottom and the back of the seat. Since there's nothing wrong with the back part of the seat, and since I'd hate to cover up those beautful period-correct German chrome forms, I haven't covered the back, and simply stuffed the back portion of the seat cover beneath the seat. The passenger seat is in much better condition than the driver's seat, but it does have one seam separation of the vinyl. I also have the same seat cover that can be installed on the passenger seat. Replacement vinyl upholstery kits are available from both XKSS and World Upholstery. If you want to use the car as a driver, I'd recommend finding and installing a set of Recaros. It used to be if you wanted Recaros in an E9, you were on your own in terms of fabricating adaptors for the seat rails, but Dave Varco at Aardvark Engineering now sells adapters for the damned reasonable price of $129. Personally, I love the look of period-correct German seats, but my 53-year-old back wins -- my 3.0CSi has Recaros in it, and I love them on long drives. In the pics below I show the seat with the cover both on and off it so you can see what is under it. The rear seats are in good condition, but the left rear seat has some cracking at the very top. The top of the rear center armrest is also cracked, with exposed foam. The back deck is just about perfect. The door panels are in good to very good condition. They have not been cut. As I said, the door wood strips are missing some veneer. The headliner is in very good to excellent condition, with no tears, rips, or obvious stains, but it does have a faint circular discoloration at the rear if you look for it. The original (I assume) carpet is in very good to excellent condition. The pictures below are left front, right front, left rear, right rear. MILEAGE The receipts I have, starting in 1998, show a steady progression from 73,924 to the 89,886 miles currently shown on the odometer. While that's not an iron-clad paper trail back to the beginning, I think it is likely the mileage is original as opposed to having rolled over. The title lists it as original, correct mileage. I have discovered that the odometer appears to be working intermittently. I asked the previous owner, and he confirms that he witnessed this intermittency. However, with the receipts and the fact that the car wasn't driven much before it went into storage, I don't think it materially affects the mileage. I could have North Hollywood Speedometer rebuild the odometer for about $120, but I'd prefer to be straight about it and sell it as-is rather than have the odometer rebuilt, not say anything, and have someone discover a rebuilt odometer. RUST PROBLEMS ON E9 CARS IN GENERAL But what you really want to hear about is rust, as that is really all that matters with an E9. New England isn't SoCal or Scottsdale AZ. If an old ungalvanized car, be it an E9 or a 2002 or an MG or a Beetle, lives in this part of the country and is not kept dry, it rusts. And keeping a car dry means garaging it. Thus, cars in this part of the country tend to bifurcate into restored hangar queens and basket cases. This car is neither. It is in that funny category "as rust-free as can be reasonably expected of a non-concours-condition New England car." If you're reading here, you probably know about E9s, but if you don't, here's a primer on their rust issues. Not only do E9s rust like any old car, there are several factors that make their rust status more difficult to evaluate than on most cars. Firstly, the rear shock towers tend to rust and / or have the weld break loose at the shock attachment point at the very top. In order to ascertain the state of the rear shock towers, you have to unbolt the trunk prop-up mechanism and peel back the plastic covers, which, on a 37 year old car, are so brittle that they shatter easily. For this reason, it's a lot to ask of a seller to pull the shock tower covers off, yet I wouldn't believe rear shock towers were rust-free without inspection or recent photographs. Second, there's a cavity -- a "trap" -- under the front shock towers of an E9 that collects moist road muck and causes the shock towers to rot out from the inside. You can't simplypull off the front fenders to check what's underneath because the fenders on an E9 aren't bolted on like they are on a 2002; they're lap-seamed at the lower corners of the windshield. When these cars were a few years old, the first indication of this rust problem often manifested itself as an electrical problem; rust would perforate the fire wall and dump water onto the fuse box. If you're looking at one of these cars, it is imperative that you crouch down, lower the hinged panel by the driver's left knee that accesses the hood release lever, take a flashlight, and look foward and above the fuse box at the firewall for rust. Then do the same thing on the passenger side by opening the glove box and looking up and forward. Third, what looks like the rocker panel on an E9 is actually a long wide screwed-on removable cover piece that runs the length of the car, from the rear corner of the front wheel well to the front corner of the rear wheel well. Without unscrewing this panel, pulling it off, and looking beneath it, it is impossible to know what the true state of the actual welded-on rocker panel is. Unfortunately, these long rocker covers are held in place by many tiny Phillips screws whose slots are often stripped and whose threads are often rusted in place. Before you remove the rocker covers, you first have to remove the chrome trim strips that sit on the door sills, and the screws for THESE are often stripped and/or rusted in place as well. Because of this, if photos of the bare rockers weren't taken during restoration, it is rare to see them photographed in an ad for an E9, even a high-dollar purportedly rust-free car. And then there's everything else. These cars rust at the bottoms of the front fenders, the corners of the wheel wells, frame rails, floors, you name it. RUST ON THIS CAR Ok, enough context about rust on E9s in general. This is a car that several owners loved and spent a ton of money on. I have two receipts from Sansossio, a respected and expensive shop in Natick MA who specializes in restoration of old German cars. The first receipt is from two owners ago in 2000 and says "Repair and refinish left front / Replace left fender and left door and door glass / Repair front hinge pillar and door hinge / Repair windshield post / Refinish clear coat paint." The bill was $4345. The second bill for $3520 is from the previous owner in 2006 and says "R&I left front floor. Repair floor. New floor. / R&I front seat, R&I rear seat / R&I rug and sound deadening matt / Clean and prep rust-proof frame. / Right front fender and right wheel house top by shock tower / Inst new sound deadening pads / Seam-seal rust-proof / Refinish right fender - clear coat paint / Color sand buff for color match." RUST ON THIS CAR, TODAY I mention the historical rust repairs and show the receipts mostly because they show the history of the car as a well-loved, well-cared-for car. But, at some level, who cares? You want to know the rust state of this car, NOW. Let's start with the walk-around pictures of the outer body. As you walk around and inspect it, you'll see rust bubbling in the following places. I have not gone digging into rust blisters with a scratch awl to see which ones perforate. But this is a higher level of description than you will see anywhere. We'll start with the nose and walk around. Below is a dime-sized spot on the nose. Below is a spot below the front windshield, near the wiper spindle. Below is a spot next to the antenna. Below is behind the beltline trim on the left front fender. It looks like the trim was tightened before the paint was dry. When I reach up under the fender with my hand to the back of this spot, I do not feel any rust-through. Below is a bloom of rust at the bottom of the left front fender. I can reach behind the left half of this rust spot and I don't feel any rust-through, but I can't reach behind the bulk of it. This is the worst rust on the outer body of the car. Below is above the left rain gutter (an odd spot). Below is at the bottom of the right front fender. This is less severe than the rust at the bottom of the left front fender. I can reach behind the right half of it and I don't feel any rust-through, but I can't reach behind the bulk of it. Below is an eraser-sized spot near the bottom of the right door. Below is on the right door below the chrome window trim. Below is the rear corner of the right rear quarter panel where it meets the wheel well. I can reach behind the left half of this rust spot and I do not feel any rust-through. I can't reach behind the right half of this rust spot. Below is a bubble next to the "CS" emblem on the trunk lid. I only see one door ding on the car -- on the right rear quarter panel: REAR SHOCK TOWERS AND SPARE TIRE WELL -- CLEAN Now that we've walked around the car, let's address the three major problem areas I described for E9s. Let's start with the rear shock towers. On this car, the liners are off, revealing absolutely perfect rear shock towers. The very top of the right shock tower is red, indicating that at some point the weld probably broke loose and was replaced with a piece off another car. The liners must've been on and masked when the trunk was painted, though, as the wheel arches and shock towers are silver. The spare tire well is in very good condition, with just one small hole. There is extremely minor surface oxidation on the flat forward surface that would come right off with a wire wheel. There is a small amount of rust bubbling at the right edge of the underside of the trunk lip. FIREWALL -- CLEAN I talked about the need to look at the firewall to see if rust from "the trap" under the front fenders has worked its way through. The firewall, as viewed from the passenger compartment of the car, both above the fusebox and above the glovebox, looks absolutely fine. FRONT SHOCK TOWERS -- NO VISIBLE RUST HOLES, BUT SOME BUBBLING Viewed from both above and below, there are no visible rust holes and little visible rust on the front shock towers, but there is a caveat. The insulating material at the top of the front shock towers on these cars often masks rust. I am not going to pull this material up or go digging into it; that is up to the next owner. However, the thin strip of insulating material running from the shock tower down to the nose on the inside side of the fender seam was already cracked and detached when I bought the car. Beneath it is some rust (pictured below). You can see that I have lightly hit half of this section with a Scotch-Brite wheel and it came right off. The underside of this section can easily be reached under the fender with your hand, and viewed directly in the photographs. I neither feel nor see any perforations under this or any section of either front shock tower. However, if I were you, I would assume that, if all this padding material is pulled up, and/or the rust bubbles are ground, you will probably find some perforations. Below is the left front shock tower from above, including the section where the insulating material had already cracked off. Below is the left front shock tower from beneath. Below is the right front shock tower from above. Below is the right front shock tower from beneath. ROCKER PANELS -- UNKNOWN Regarding the rocker panels that are hidden by the long panel covers... on this car, I tried to pull the rocker covers off, and is typically the case, was stymied by a couple of stuck Phillips head screws. I was not prepared to follow this all the way down the rabbit hole and drill the screws out. I did get the chrome trim strip off the passenger side door sill before abandoning the job, and the top of the door sill is 100% solid, and is green (ie, the paint job was through enough that this trim was removed). This is shown in the photo below. I cannot stress strongly enough that I have NEVER seen an ad for an E9 where they have removed these rocker covers and photographed what was underneath because it is such a total pain in the ass to do so. So my failure to do so does not present additional risk over and above any other E9 -- it represents the same risk. The only difference is that I am telling you about it. WHEEL WELLS -- GOOD BUT NOT PERFECT Let's move to detailed photos of under the wheel wells. Below is the front right wheel well, along with the photos of the underside of the shock tower already shown above. You'll see that, in the fifth photo, at the lower rear corner, there is a bit of flaking and softness. I have not poked at this to probe its extent. Next, the rear right wheel well. You'll see that at the front corner, there is a bit of flaking and softness. I began gently brushing this with a wire brush, and began to dislodge what appears to be a welded-on patch. I have not probed it further. Moving on to the left rear wheel well, there are no apparent issues: Next is the left front wheel well, which shows what appears to be a stabilized (that is, primed / painted) rust hole at the rear corner. I believe this is on the vertical face of the fender, where it bolts to a vertical slat that is attached to the body of the car. There are also pics of the underside of the left front shock tower. FRAME RAILS AND FLOORS -- FRAME RAILS CLEAN; HOLE IN PASSENGER FLOOR Below are pictures of the frame rails and the floors. The frame rails of this car look absolutely fine, save some very minor surface oxidation where jacks and jack stands have been put over the years. There is rust on the passenger side floor around the big circular drain plug. This is the worst rust on the car. The front driver's side floor was professionally repaired by Sansossio. Looking at the floors from inside the car (the order is left front, right front, left rear, right rear), on the driver's side, you're seeing what look to be correctly-restored floorboards with sound-deadening insulation, done by Sansossio. The passenger-side floorboards have not been restored. DOORS The only rust I see on the doors is on the top on the passenger side door, photographed in the walkaround. The lips on the door bottoms look solid. ENGINE Because the car had been sitting for a few years, there was some amount of engine smoke when I first ran it, but that dissipated. It now starts right up, idles, and runs just about smoke-free (you can see this in the videos). I pulled off the valve cover, adjusted the valves, and checked the banjo bolts holding on the oil distribution tube. Worn cam lobes on #1 and 2 cylinders is a known problem on these M30 engines if oil isn't making it all the way to the front of the distribution tube, but the lobes all look perfect. As you can see from the photo, the head is clean and shiny, with absolutely no accumulation of gunk or blow-by sludge under the oil cap. I say this because, to my surprise, when I did a compression test, it came up a bit uneven -- 155-110-140-145-150-105. I squired two capfuls of coil into cylinders #2 and 6, and the compression shot up to 165 and 180, respectively. Once I ran the car and drove it around a bit, the #2 and #6 compression came up to 120. It's not unusual for cars that sit to take a while for the rings to get fully unstuck. The fact that the head and valve cover are free of evidence of long-term blow-by tends to confirm that the car wasn't run with worn or weak rings, and that the uneven compression is likely an artifact of the car's having sat. As I said earlier, the head gasket was replaced about ten years ago. The head is date-stamped '85, so obviously it was replaced at some point. There is absolutely no indiation of oil in the antifreeze or antifreeze in the oil. Once I replaced the oil filter housing and put a T-bolt clamp on one of the power steering lines, the engine compartment doesn't appear to leak anything. GLASS The glass is in very good condition. The front windshield is so clear and pit-free it is possible it was replaced at some point. There are etched anti-theft codes in the driver's door window and vent window, as was popular during the '80s. These probably came in with the door and glass replacement by Sansossio. WHEELS AND TIRES I have two sets of wheels for the car. They buyer can have one set, but not both. It came with the original 14" alloys with the five oval holes. These were straight and largely scuff-free, but caked with bonded-on brake dust. I cleaned them with etching wheel cleaner, which took off the brake dust and what little was left of the finish. I also have the center caps which are in excellent condition. I know that many people think these -- the originals -- are the only wheels that should ever be seen on an E9. Personally they don't do a lot for me. I think coupes look much better wearing Alpina-style radially-spoked rims. On my CSi I replaced my original alloys with a set of 14" BMW 20-spoke wheels. These are BMW wheels that were original equipment on later E9s as well as 3.0Si sedans and E12 (530i) sedans. They look so much like Alpinas that people often confuse the two. My CSi wore these for many years until I happened into a set of real 16" Alpina open lug wheels. Since I was no longer using these 14s, they were available -- and wearing better rubber (225 60 14 Yokos) than the wheels the 3.0CS came with -- so I put them on. Personally I think they look much better. The original wheels are wearing 225 60 14 Yokos in the back, and unevenly worn 215 60 14s Yokos in the front. If you want the original wheels and hubcaps instead of the radially-spoked wheels, you can have them, but not both. TRUNK As stated, there is no rust on the shock towers, and very little in the spare tire well. In terms of the trim, the trunk is only fair; the trim is incomplete. I do have the elephant skins for the insides of the rear quarter panels, and the wooden panels that cover the gas tank and the spare tire well (both in no better than fair condition), but I do not have the rear cover that goes over the taillights, or the shock tower liners. The liners are available brand new at bmwmobiletradition for $119 per side; see http://bmwmobiletradition-online.com/bmw/showparts.do?model=3435&mospid=47811&btnr=51_3467& hg=51&fg=65. I do not have the tool kit or the tools. The spare tire is an original alloy wheel wearing a 225/60 14 tire. SUSPENSION The car has Bilstein HDs in the back. From the feel of the front struts, I assume they are also HDs. All shocks and structs function correctly (neither seized nor blown). The original front bushings have been replaced with red urethane ones. The bushings between the rear subframe and the body also have been replaced with red urethane. A set of red urethane bushings that go between the rear subframe and the rear trailing arms have not been installed and come with the car. The tie rods and center track rods were replaced (they still have the part number tags on them), but the previous owner tells me the car was not aligned afterward. The need for an alignment is borne out by the wear pattern on the tires that were on the car. BRAKES When I bought the car, I replaced the seized right rear caliper and the warped front rotors, and bled the brakes several times. The brake pedal was still soft, so I replaced the six flexible rubber brake hoses, as with age, these can swell and contribute to a soft pedal. I then bled it two more times. The brakes are entirely functional, but the pedal is still a bit softer than I'd like. Typically, if bleeding doesn't cure a soft pedal, the next step is replacing the master cylinder. However, because the pedal is rock-hard when the engine is off, and because the pedal never goes to the floor, and because the receipts show the master cylinder was replaced in 2005, I am not certain a new master cylinder will firm up the pedal, and thus I have not replaced it. It is possible there is still air somewhere in the line (or in the master cylinder itself), or other components may need replacement. Again, I stress that the brakes are functional -- just with a pedal that is a bit softer than I'd like. ELECTRICALS The car should pass inspection; the lights, directionals, and wipers all work. All four electric windows roll up and down, though the rear ones, as is common, are gosh-awful slow coming back up. Position 4 of the ignition switch (rotate to start) doesn't work; a previous owner installed a small pushbutton starter switch to the left of the steering column. The period-correct radio and speaker work, but the antenna is snapped off. The directional / hazard arrow on the dashboard remains illuminated whenever the ignition is on. AIR CONDITIONING The car has air conditioning. It appears to be complete; all components -- compressor, condensor, fan, evaporator assembly, hose, air-conditioned console with correct faceplate -- appear to be present and accounted for. As of this writing, I haven't even turned it on. After the auction, I would consider negotiating a price with the buyer to diagnose and possibly repair the A/C. ODDS AND ENDS The insulation on the underside of the hood is original, meaning the foam dissolves instantly when even brushed lightly with your hand. Someone should just hit it with a power washer and be done with it. The hood-raising mechanism broke and was removed. Both door brakes (door stops) need to be replaced. I think you'll have to agree that I have provided a more honest, detailed, complete description of the car than most you see on eBay. It is, however, a 38 year old BMWs, and as such, it may have problems of which I am not aware. I will candidly admit that I have driven this car little -- it is not currently registered or insured. Again, I am not presesenting it as a car that I have driven hundreds of miles and and thoroughly sorted out. But it runs and drives well, expecially considering it's been off the road for several years. The car is currently at my house in West Newton, MA. If interested parties wish to drive it prior to purchase, I could make arrangements to take it over to where I work in Waltham MA, which is an industrial area at the end of a street where there is a large parking lot and fewer nosy neighbors. If you have any questions, pick up the phone and call me, 617-365-eight three oh three (way better than e-mail). But, although I like to talk cars as much as the next guy (in fact I like to talk about cars WAAAAY more than the next guy), try to keep it specific to the auction. Lastly, the usual auction stuff: --I am advertising the car locally so I reserve the right to end the auction at any time. --The car is sold as is, where is. --The car is not currently registered or insured, so if you buy it and wish to drive it any further than onto a transporter, you must show up with a license plate. --I have the Massachusetts title to the car. --In order to bid, you must have at least 20 feedbacks and a rating of at least 95%. --I will need a $500 deposit within 48 hours, and the bulk of the money within 7 days. I will wait for any check to clear before releasing the car, so you can not simply show up with a check, even a bank check. The exception is coming during banking hours with a Bank of America check, as we can go to a BOM branch office and cash the check. --Coming with cash is fine. But know that if you show up thinking that your winning bid is the starting point of a bargaining process, you will go home empty-handed. Especially considering the degree I have gone to to thoroughly describe the car, I have zero tolerance for this. --Arranging transport is up to you. I certainly can assist if you contract someone to pick it up. --Unless you live very close to Boston, I do not recommend you drive the car home, more because of weather and the need to keep the car dry than any known or inherent reliability issue. If you do, you do so at your own risk, I can pick you up at Logan airport or at the train station. On Jan-04-12 at 04:09:13 PST, seller added the following information: Thank all of you who have written, complimenting me on my thorough description. This listing was just picked up by BringATrailer.com: http://bringatrailer.com/2012/01/03/listing-lesson-full-disclosure-1973-bmw-3-0cs/ On Jan-04-12 at 07:59:13 PST, seller added the following information: A few people have pointed out that my "I have the car advertised locally and thus reserve the right to end the auction at any time" is at odds with the no-reserve auction. I do not, in fact, have the car advertised anywhere locally, and I have every intent of letting the no-reserve auction run until completion. This lengthy description started out as a trial balloon last month on e9coupe.com. I should've edited out that sentence when I posted it here on eBay. I suppose it's possible that someone local could see the auction here, come and inspect the car, and offer me a boatload of money on the spot, but I think it is highly unlikely.