Junkyard Find: 1983 BMW 320i
Published: May 20th, 2012
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Between the old-timey 2002 and the hugely influential E30, there was the E21. Over in Yurp, BMW shoppers could buy 315s and 316s and 323s and I don’t know what all, but here in North America we know the E21 almost exclusively via the good old 320i. The 2002 overlapped E21 production by a couple of years; likewise, BMW showrooms in 1983 held the final examples of the 320i side-by-side with the brand-new E30-platform 318i. Here’s an example of one of those end-times E21s, spotted last week in a Denver self-service wrecking yard.
Either somebody pried off the little “i” on this emblem without leaving a mark, or we’re looking at a European-market 320 trunk lid. Such are the mysteries of the junkyard.
Almost 220,000 miles on the clock, extremely respectable for a Late Malaise Era car that probably got hooned every day of its life.
This car is fairly straight, a bit of rust but nothing too terrible. Looks like somebody grabbed the seats right away, perhaps the same BMW aficionado that picked this nearby 2002 clean.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Ah, the car that sold me on BMW. I was a poor student, and commuted with a much better off friend. We'd carpool, my rusty 72 Nova being my contribution. He liked to go out late and party, which made driving to school @6 am leave time rough. We worked out a plan where he'd go party, and the next morning I'd drive....his car-the deal was I'd always drive...twist my arm. (we didn't go out together so I'd have a normal night's sleep) Daddy bought him a new 320i. (I later found out the 320i was to slow him down...he'd crashed out two new Vettes, but we all know life is not fair.) I'd pick him up, he'd sleep, and I'd have a great ride into and out of school. He slept pretty soundly too. I loved this car, it transmitted the BMW virus I still have today...the only thing is it was slow for a kid whose prior car was a 400 Firebird-euro teacup motor didn't really cut it, but the chassis was sweetness and light. We later bought a 325is, the later model, and it had the missing HP....now a 7 second 0-60 time is considered slow. BMW cars are very well built. You can bitch about I drive or the transmissions in the 5 series, but with a good owner, they run for a very long time. I had a salesman claim he was told by an engineer at BMW that the service life is 24 years or 400k miles. I cannot vouch for that but working on my 9 year old 3 is easier than my 4 year old Acura, and there is much less rust on the fittings of the BMW. With less to go wrong and simpler electrics, I'm not at all surprised that the car made it this far-and someone is enjoying those sport seats.
At one point I was looking at old BMWs just for the build quality, I decided against one thanks to parts cost.