Beautiful, Fast, Restored & Nicely Modified 2002ti on 2040-cars

This car was purchased in early, 2000 from the estate of a friend who had died suddenly in the middle of a several year restoration program for the car.  I picked it up in Connecticut as a stripped rolling chassis and 65 boxes of parts.  My friend had died suddenly at the age of 44.  She ran a small parts business out of her home.  She had owned this car since about 1980, winning the Super Clean Concours class at the BMWCCA Oktoberfest events in both 1982 and 1983.  I promised her brother and sister that I would restore the car as she would have wanted.  The car odometer read about 96,400 miles when we began the restoration.  It currently reads about 15,200 miles.  The engine, transmission and shift linkage was rebuilt in the past 3000 miles.  Actual mileage is unknown.

The car had been repainted a color that I call “cream yellow”.  It is not an original BMW color, but in the accompanying photographs you can find pictures of the car in the same color in the 1984 book, “BMW Bavaria’s Driving Machines by Jan P. Norbye.   I believe the car was originally “Nevada” or “Sahara Beige”.  I can’t prove the car was always a 2002ti, even though Norbye’s book refers to it as a fine example of a 2002ti.  I purchased the car with accompanying dual sidedraft Weber carburetors. The VIN identifies the car as a U.S. production 2002, built in December 1970.  It’s possible that it was purchased in Germany by a U.S. serviceman and was always a 2002ti, but I cannot verify that speculation.   Bill Holmes, owner of Bavarian Rennsport, and I decided to transform the car to 2002tii spec +, when we began assembling the car in mid-2000, believing the Kugelfischer mechanical fuel injection (standard in the tii) would be easier to tune than the sidedrafts (standard in a ti).

My goal was to create a beautiful restoration that could be shown at local car shows and would be competitive in BMW CCA San Diego Chapter autocrosses, could possibly be taken to the track for a HPDE.  I’ve only taken it to the track twice (Buttonwillow and Laguna Seca), but I have autocrossed it over 20 times.  If there are 20 stock M3’s at the autocross (E30, E36 or E46), I would usually beat all but 3 or 4 of them.  If there were 20 modified M3’s, I would usually beat half of them.  As for the car shows, it has won the Super Clean and Masters division at the annual San Diego Clean Car Show, and won the Jack Cavanaugh Memorial Trophy as Judges Choice as well.  Last August it took second place in the BMW Oktoberfest Concours Modified division in Monterey, CA.

Exterior

I believe my friend began the ground-up restoration in about 1996.  It included a new nose, hood, front fenders and rocker panels.  The car has lived in Southern California since I purchased it and been driven only twice in light rain since that time, never in snow, and always garaged and covered.  While most people think the car looks great on the exterior, there is one small “bump” near the right bottom corner of the rear window that I believe to be rust, beneath a still-painted area.  The “bump” is about an inch in diameter.  The rest of the car is quite nice, but not perfect.  Bill Holmes says I’m overly critical, but there are a couple areas where the paint (from 1998?) is failing in small sections and there are several “parking lot dings”.  One “ding” is on the hood, one on the driver’s door, a couple in the rear trunk area, and a few more around the chrome belt-line area.  On other cars that I’ve owned, I’ve used a local body repair paint shop that does a lot of work for the Escondido, CA car dealers.  He has given me a quote of $5500 to fix the “bump”, all the blemishes and repaint the car.  That’s why the price for this beauty is $28,000 and not $35,000.  I figure that a buyer might want to change the color, so why go through the expense of repainting and decided to lower the car price instead.

The car rides on 15” x 6” Panasport alloys, shod with Dunlop SP Sport 9000 tires.  I also have a set of 14” BBS 6 1/2 ” rims from a BMW 325is (E30) shod with Falken Azenis AT 615 K’s.

Mechanical

The car is mechanically superb.  I know of nothing wrong with engine, transmission, shift linkage, suspension, brakes or electrical system.  Anything that could make the car work better, be more reliable, be faster, or handle better has been done.  The transmission is a very rare, 2002 close ratio five-speed, not a 320i conversion.  Try to buy one, if you can find it, for less than $4000.  Bavarian Rennsport rebuilt the engine in the past 3000 miles with ceramic coated pistons.  It has a very rare BMW Motorsport 300° cam (cost, about $1000).  It has 320i slotted front brake rotors, with 528i calipers.  The rear brakes are from a 2002 Turbo (a bit larger than stock).  It has the tii brake booster and stainless steel brake lines.  The radiator is aluminum, larger than stock, and the radiator fan is upgraded.  The headers are the highly regarded custom Bavarian Rennsport headers and a Bavarian Rennsport exhaust.

The suspension was coordinated by Bill Holmes, using custom coilovers by Ireland Engineering and Ireland rear springs, with Eibach front and rear anti rollbars.  It is fully adjustable for camber, caster and toe on both the front and rear suspension.

It has a cold start button, a Bavarian Rennsport custom oil baffle, High Performance Engineering front stress bar, with engine block torque brace, and the High Performance Engineering rear stress bar with trunk battery relocation kit.

Interior

The interior is beautiful and in excellent condition.  While I still have the original front seats, I installed leather Recaro’s garnered from Dave Varco at Aardvarc Racing.  Dave said they were originally in a Porsche 911.  He recovered them, and the rear bench seat in lovely saddle brown BMW leather.  The car is equipped with BMW E36 3 point seatbelts in both the front and rear.  The carpet was new at the time of the restoration and is in excellent condition.  The headliner and dashboard were new for the restoration and are in great condition, but the vinyl cover for the instruments has a slight tear in it.  The tii clock was rebuilt using modern innards by North Hollywood Speedometer.  The VDO gauges include oil temperature, oil pressure and a voltmeter.  The Alpine stereo/CD player is new in the past couple of years and includes great speakers and hands-free Bluetooth capabilities.

Why am I selling it?

I’m not sure I have a good reason.  I’m past retirement age and I had “minor” heart surgery this past year, so maybe I’m looking at things a bit differently these days.  Bill Holmes says I’m crazy to sell it.  He says that it’s the second fastest 2002 he’s ever driven, after an Alpina special from years ago.  He says it would cost over $50,000 to reproduce what I have here and that I’ll regret selling it.  I don't know, maybe I just want to put a smile on someone else's face when they get behind the wheel.