The car was purchased from the original (I think) owner in January 2001. We’ve put about 96000 miles on it since then. It went from being our primary transportation to my wife’s around town car, and now we feel it’s time for her to have something newer.
Blue-plated California car with zero rust and no accidents
Garage-kept for past 20 years
New timing belt, tensioner, water pump, coolant replacement and valve adjustment less that 1k miles ago
Runs great and very reliable. No shimmies or shakes. A smooth, comfortable driver
E39 15” Style 29 wheels. Tires in good condition.
Gets decent mileage (20 in the city, close to 30 on the highway if you’re careful)
Near-new factory windshield and gasket
Perfect crack-free dash with dash mat
Euro headlights with working city lights (they operate with parking lights)
Rear foglight positions wired as additional brake lights
Clean interior with 535i steering column and steering wheel and custom (Bavauto) rubber floor mats
Keyless central locking
Complete 535i toolkit
Single-stage alpinweiss paint is holding up well
Includes Thule roof rack with wind deflector, and a lot of spare parts (spare H1/H4 headlights, ICV, windshield wipers inserts, spare cylinder head, etc, and a not-too-bad but a bit rusty on the inside euro front bumper with brackets and euro turn signals that I never got around to installing).
Has always easily passed smog test
E46 manual front seats in front. Driver’s seat is just starting to split a little bit. Cloth rear set with no tears.
248k miles
Gas gauge is optimistic
Temperature gauge only works reliably in the summer
Leaks both engine oil and ATF. Not enough to be noticeable on the dipstick between oil changes, but enough to get the pan wet enough that I need to clean it up every week or so.
Some dings, particularly as shown in photos. Some on the roof from an earlier roof rack (damned bikes! – my fault) and one on the hood from the kayak whose strap broke and fell into the bike stand which got knocked over and hit the car (not my fault)
Some small tears in headliner over right C-pillar
Has fairly new A/C compressor running R134a, but needs a can of refrigerant once in a while. And cools about as good as an e28 A/C running R134a. A lot better than nothing, but not totally adequate.
This car has been a beloved part of the family and we’ll be sad to see it go.
$4500
Some underneath photos for east coast skeptics:
Last edited by doug on Jan 29, 2021 10:57 AM, edited 16 times in total.
I'm surprised this is still around. Not a 100 point Pebble Beach concours car, but very clean looking. Looks nicer than my 535 did 20 years ago when I bought it, before I put another 155K on it. Rust belt guys, if you don't have to have an M30 car, this looks like it's very worthy of investigation.
glowell222 wrote: Jan 26, 2021 1:28 PM
I am interested in this car, but those roof dings are mentally hard to get past.
Yeah, me too. For whatever it's worth, I think the photos make it look worse than it does in person. This probably happened 15 years ago, and I don't really notice it much. I'm no PDR expert, but I'm assuming it could be put right if someone wanted to pull the headliner. I was never that motivated.
I got to see this car on Sunday. I was not there to look at the 528e, but it caught my eye and honestly if I was looking for a nice straight white E28, I’d have probably handed Doug the $4500. Very clean car, clearly well maintained and everything he said about being garaged really shows. It really looked fresh. I didn’t drive the car. Doug started it and it ran smoothly. Can’t help but say I was impressed.
As for the few dings and the roof, PDR should be able to handle those and being original paint, it’s possible they can be fixed without being invasive. That said, pulling the rear glass and the rear of the headliner isn’t that big of a deal, and since the headliner could use a bit of attention, it can be a two-fer.
I’d say I’m shocked it’s not sold yet but I think the location is the biggest issue.
I bought this car, it just arrived off the transport truck an hour ago. Doug was a great guy to deal with, the car is exactly as described and I'm very happy.
