Junkyard Find: 1983 BMW 633 CSi
The BMW E24 6-series is one of those cars with a vast, uncrossable gulf between the values assigned to it by Internet Car Experts and those assigned by Hardbitten Burned-By-Real-World-Purchases Car Experts. The Internet Car Expert has seen an ’87 635CSi in nice shape with an asking price of $25,000 on Craigslist, and therefore he knows that even a rough one is worth ten grand, minimum. The Hardbitten Burned-By-Real-World-Purchases Car Expert once paid $2,500 for a fairly solid E24, put $1,500 of parts into it, and sold it for $2,750. The junkyard doesn’t lie, and I see E24s in cheap self-service yards all the time, so often that I don’t photograph most of them. Today’s Junkyard Find, however, has just enough of that Late Malaise Era appeal, with its overtones of imminent Able-Archer 83-triggered nuclear annihilation (plus a manual transmission), that I decided to shoot it.
It’s hard to imagine BMW adding these cheezy tape stripes, even back in 1983, but they appear to be factory-applied.
The E24’s guts were pretty much the same as those of the E28 5-series, and so the 6 tended to last for a respectable (for the early 1980s) number of miles.
You don’t see many of these cars with manual transmissions, since low-level S&L scammers and white-powder salesmen back then mostly wanted automatic-transmission luxury to go with their German-coupe style.
This one is pretty rusty by Denver standards, so it probably spent some of its life in the Midwest.
181 horses out of this 3.2 liter Big Six engine. That sounds weak these days, but was impressive enough in 1983.
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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The the rusty rear wheel arches was the death knell for this Shark . The 181K is barely broken for the M 30 engine. Manual transmissions were more common in the earlier 533s 633s and 733s than the later models. With the Bentley manual for the E 28 and on line support, the E 24 is a great car for a DIY'er. They are very easy to work on. But they will put in the poor house if you have to pay a mechanic.
Would you believe I owned one of these until two years ago? 1983 and all! I got it cheap because it needed paint and a tune up, but it was still VERY solid (only had 90K miles on it. I rolled it flat-black (even the wheels), serviced it and drove it 100 miles everyday to work and back for well over a year. Even went on a 900 mile trip with it. I was a bit too aggressive down my uncles long, rutted, gravel driveway one drunken night and split the body weld going up the strut-tower to the windshield (right on the seam). It felt noticeably "looser" after that so I pawned it off on my neighbor (another car guy, who knew exactly what he was getting himself into) and picked up a Mercedes C126 in its place. Two weeks later it was stolen from him and showed back up missing EVERYTHING three days after that. They even took the lug nuts! E24s were great cars, and not particularly expensive to own if you can turn your own wrench. Being 28, I never thought id get the chance to own one and Im very happy I did. Great driving car... and that shark-nose is lovely to see everytime you get out of it. Now, if only I could get my 560 to sip gas like the M30 in that E24 Id be ok...