The Thrill of Collecting BMWs: A Conversation with a Enthusiast

We sat down with a BMW enthusiast who had just acquired a rare Z3, and we couldn't help but notice their extensive collection of BMWs. As we chatted, it became clear that this individual's passion for collecting BMWs knew no bounds.

"I still have the Z8 right," they said, "I still have the Z8 yes, yes I have to collect them all like Pokémon." This enthusiasm for collecting was evident in their eyes as they began to recount the story of how they acquired the latest addition to their collection. "We're almost there what you got left well the X5 and the M3 okay yeah or three series any three series but I want an M3," they explained.

The conversation continued, with our enthusiast explaining that they had recently purchased a used car that required some repairs before it could be driven. "It's at the paint shop oh okay well we got a clutch for it so that's good news as soon as it gets here do the clutch rear struts breaks all the way around oil change and she's all yours," they said, clearly excited about their latest find.

However, things took a turn for the worse when our enthusiast discovered that the car had some serious issues. "Front strut is like completely blown oh perfect yeah and these tires look uh they're from second world war i guess so oh geez i've never seen a broken bushing on a Ether take the light away yeah that's yeah that's ruined yeah," they said, visibly frustrated.

Despite the setbacks, our enthusiast remained optimistic, taking note of other problems with the car. "You got brakes i do have brake pads and rotors left yeah you do hello is that a sensor yeah but it's not broken so okay oh boy the ball cover is so bad um your oil filter housing is not leaking it's just the uh valve cover and your venus hose oh that's good news yeah yeah pretty rust in the back and obviously you need shots in the back too yeah."

It became clear that our enthusiast had a keen eye for spotting problems, but sometimes even they were surprised by what they found. "What about my brakes you think they just need a bleed uh yeah i would just say um but look your ears are not even engaging at all right the rotors are all rusty huh yeah there's no brakes whatsoever in the back how does that happen uh we're gonna have to bleed them and see yeah you have zero brakes in the back they're not sweeping at all well obviously something's doing some stopping so i would say and we'll bleed the clutch too," they explained.

As our conversation came to a close, our enthusiast revealed that they had almost forgotten about one crucial aspect of their car: the spare tire. "I also want new badges and i know they run like 40 bucks a pop times four right or bmw oh you're already clicking away so this isn't something that you're just going to uh spitball huh no it's a little more involved here yeah there's a lot of stuff we were so busy freaking out over the tires and brakes i didn't notice the spare situation here which is a cute little donut mounted like a truck from the 50s or something i've never seen this on a car this side of the new millennium but it seems loose johnny yeah it shouldn't be that good oh so that could just fall out huh oh you're printing okay it's a decent list it thirty three hundred dollars wow uh okay well nothing like ridiculously expensive other than the struts are pretty uh yeah those are for uh for genuine oem struts are there cheaper options uh we can get the beast the befores yeah definitely mm-hmm all right so we can save a little money there but i still for a 2 000 e3 that looks like that i also found some used seats for 500 dollars which would really make this thing look a lot better the top has a little tear in the back glass that's the glass alone is like almost 500 bucks to do so great so basically add another grand to this and you have a somewhat presentable z3 with well paint that still looks like that but yeah why am i doing this i have no idea i want to have them all and all the problems that come with it but it's still a cheap c3 with a stick and the right engine we still have the z8 right yes why are you so worried about the z8 well the goal is to get them all out on the track okay and do a magazine style shootout with all of them if i took this thing as is with the tires on the rear brakes i would kill somebody you cannot even make it to the to the highway so uh well i've been driving on the highway that's what's terrifying um so i'll leave it with you because i absolutely shouldn't drive anymore with the brakes like that that's uh i can't believe i drove it as long as i did that's a death wish yeah so have fun and good luck with your repairs," they said, handing over their keys to our team.

As we parted ways, it was clear that this individual's passion for collecting BMWs was unwavering. Despite the challenges that came with owning multiple vehicles, their enthusiasm remained strong, and we couldn't help but admire their dedication to their hobby.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyeah that's some patina theirs beautiful oh tyler what have you done oh oh oh dear well this binacle cover can just be a dunce cap for me oh crap welcome to hooves garage the dumbest automotive channel in all of youtube and before you today is a pair of bond cars and they are both silver they are both bmws they were both in bond movies but really other than being convertibles and bmws they couldn't be more different from each other especially as they sit today to my right is a 2001 bmw z8 which is an icon now a majorly coveted collectible that i actually bought really cheap so cheap the dealer won't let me tell you how much i paid for it but normally these are more than two hundred thousand dollars and to my left well the car that made this car to my right a failure a 2000 bmw z3 that i bought for two thousand dollars because well it's had the hardest 93 000 miles any car has pretty much ever had a theft recovery a repo and it's from houston it probably saw a little bit of water nothing about that on the carfax though but still a 2 000 car that many people mixed up with well this a very very expensive collectible vehicle and they do have some things in common but the z3 well it's just now a normal used car for the most case unless it's a coveted m model but this one just being the base model bmw m pretty beat up does show its pluses and minuses with the z3 but still there are a lot of things to like with this car now the purpose of buying both of these along with a 2000 bmw m5 and a 2001 740i sport all in silver is i think 2001 was the best lineup of bmw of all time it's his 20th anniversary it's not being celebrated and even when they were new bmw really didn't celebrate it because they were moving on to the bengal but era and well styling and technology just circling the drain when it comes to bmws this on the other hand was when bmw was at its best for the most part there's some weak links in there the e46 m3 i have yet to find but zeroing in on one same with the x5 4.6 is really trying to find one of those or a stick with the three liter tough to find though but really from a styling standpoint and where bmw was at the time what their mission was the ultimate driving machine and mechanically well still not reliable but way better than what we have today this is when bmw and cars in general were at their best and this z3 is definitely going to be the cheapest entry into what i call the bmw dream team at only two thousand dollars but still really really cool and arguably a huge success for bmw so let's take a closer look at it i said arguably but really there's not much to argue about when it comes to sales figures this car built from 1995 to 2002. they sold almost 300 000 of these cars 300 000 as opposed to the z8 where they sold a little over 2 000 of them way shorter projections and way above projections and if you were one of the first people to want to buy these you usually had to wait a year unless you were special because when it came out in goldeneye pierce brosnan driving a beautiful aqua one in cuba barely got any screen time at all it sold out they had the neiman marcus catalog bond edition z3 that completely sold out and then all the whole model run from the first year despite the puny four-cylinder that you could only get for the first few years they had completely sold out only like 134 horsepower so a miata was putting out almost more power but this was a miata in a tuxedo or a bond tuxedo and they cost twice as much as the miata as well almost 30 thousand dollars compared to the miata that was like fifteen thousand dollars adjusted for inflation that's over fifty thousand dollars for a z3 like this so twice the number of a miata and you didn't get twice the power and you sure didn't get twice the quality but it certainly looked a lot better and it felt a lot better in the interior these things are much more of a quiet comfortable gt car and if you got one with a stick then it was plenty fun to drive the automatics were absolutely atrocious early on this one thankfully is a stick and it is a 2000 so the four-cylinder was gone and now this base model had the inline-six but it's kind of a funny story with that which i shall show you now in a tour of this absolutely destroyed z3 so let's start with the back on the weirdest part of this bmw and it's not the badges that are just dying it's actually this 2.3 badge here because actually under the hood is a 2.5 liter like mercedes will round up for example their 6.3 liter badge is actually a 6.2 under the hood with my sls so this is a weird example of them underselling the displacement as you can see a pretty standard 2.5 liter inline 6 under the hood the same engine sold in countless bmws 3 series and basically the underpinnings of this car are very very 3 series 180 horsepower and there are several theories as to why they did this false badge the first one is because this was the base model and then the top tier model which non-m car of course was the 2.8 liter in 2000 so they didn't want 2.5 and 2.8 to be so close together hence the 2.3 badge also they had the 323 and the 328 at the time so maybe they wanted to differentiate that way i'm not sure maybe they just had a surplus of 2.3 badges who knows but under the hood it looks very very tidy this is one of the few cars where under the hood looks way better than the rest of the car because things get really really rough from here now the underpinnings of this are very three series the rear end design is identical to the previous generation of m3 the e30 m3 the front is basically three series and well the styling of it is certainly very good i can understand why people were confused by the z3 and the z8 a car being thirty thousand dollars and then like a hundred and thirty thousand dollars why anybody would go and buy that uh well just drive them and you'll see the difference for sure why anybody would pay double or triple for a z8 over a z3 well it gets a little murkier but definitely a difference here same side gills but uh everything is faded in here now one of the reasons why i think this car hasn't aged that well as far as things we're going to see that's broken in a little bit is this is the first bmw that was built wholly in the united states they built no z3s in germany they built three series obviously in germany but this was the first car to be solely built in the united states so if you're buying one in europe it was built in the united states same with the x5 and that's why i think well the quality was not as good as other three series the z8 and others and as you can see the interior well it's completely falling apart i mean absolutely disgusting i'm guessing the buttons had fallen through here so somebody put electrical tape around them so they wouldn't fall through anymore the wood's all cracking the dash is completely cracked along with the instrument binnacle which is well just ruined so you have a little darth vader helmet so you can cosplay in your z3 on the weekends using its parts i believe this was originally a power top it only works manually now but as you look around this thing it was well not the best taking care of car but still only 93 000 miles so you think it would have held up just a little bit better and there's some really common things that all these z3s have like the the glove box where it starts sagging there at the latch just so many little weird american quality things that you can really tell the difference between one of these that was built in the united states and south carolina and one that was built well in germany you can see this mirror has completely noped itself out so no reflection at all the seats i don't know what i'm going to do with the seas because they have this weird ostrich pattern in the inserts so just reupholstering it black it's not going to match of course the seat motors and these things completely broken on this side a lot of play on this side so it so it jiggles back and forth so it is an absolute mess but still it was only two thousand dollars it has a great engine under the hood that was probably built in germany same with the five-speed manual transmission a fantastic combo and it does drive pretty well the airbag lights on the brake light is on the brakes barely work they're actually kind of scary and well the engine the check engine light's on and it's smoking from under the hood probably from a valve cover gasket so there are plenty of things to fix on this z3 being a little mileage it may be worth putting some money into this thing but since it's theft recovery and a repo probably not i mean i'm already gonna have to spend several hundred dollars on a windshield several hundred dollars on tires and that's before addressing any of the mechanical issues so this thing is quite a mess it is properly a hoopty but hopefully there's not too many more hidden surprises when we get to the car ninja's lair and he assesses everything that's wrong with this car it's uh yeah that's that's a great look too when the metal just kind of roughs like that houston is a really tough place for cars but still this is this is really bad check engine light has turned off so that's good but the traction control light is turned on so that's new still a really happy little engine it's just the brakes that don't inspire much confidence that i mean they work it's just and eventually they start working thing which is very scary for the first second when you touch the pedal but overall i mean it's a car it's a working driving five-speed manual convertible that i got for next to nothing uh with quite a story that ed bullion would just go crazy for unfortunately though to make it legal with a new windshield i'm going to have to spend 300 bucks tires completely ruined so i have to spend a bunch of money there and i'm sure there's more to these brakes than uh i probably want to spin but we'll find out here at the car ninjas but overall just a really fun little toss-around car they call these things miata's the tuxedo and that's exactly what this is it's a very very nice car but just really fun to drive definitely smaller than the z8 a little more tossable just on the same planet quality wise but still a plenty nice place to be if your seats don't help look like that i wonder what the carnage is gonna have to say about it why that look what's wrong what's wrong with this e3 it's ugly what's ugly about his e3 what happened to the z8 you didn't trade it in for it did you oh i traded this guy straight across pretty good deal huh anyway you know about this thing it's uh it's real peach the brake pedal doesn't do anything until well almost all the way to the floor and uh we got lights on we got leaks we've we've got it all it's a bmw it's a bmw it's it's got it all and obviously the glove box oh they all do that don't they yes very very famous back in the day i used to make a bracket like a solid bracket and we'll just hold it back nice used to use you don't do it anymore you maybe from burning oil oh oh yeah all right take a look under the hood of this thing how crooked am i oh you're perfect okay stop right there no parking brakes you're rolling there's no parking brake i have to i have to do this with the parking brake if you if you want it here hold the phone no the button is broken so if you want a parking brake i have to prop it up like that but anyway that's one way to have a parking brake yep a little smoky from the valve cover i imagine yeah oh oh i'll shut her off runs good so it looks pretty oily huh very so we got the valve cover we got your venus hose vano's hose right here oh they're very common in this kind of okay and we lift it up to see your oil filter housing if it's leaking or not only has 93 000 miles on it the engine looks pretty clean everything else pretty hard life is a theft recovery and a repo on this thing so uh unfortunately yeah in the seats that's another unfortunate thing this one doesn't move well one side moves and it twists the other side has up oh yeah they have that has the jiggle how about yeah that too you know how to open it just push on it yeah there you go yep i think we can ignore that there's also plenty of broken things like that and this is uh yeah it's here's a nun i think a darth vader hat something stuck in the track or something oh sure enough you fixed it kind of kind of i'd say that's good enough for a car of this price yeah fast on that now we have to see all these you have to glue them together cool so don't lose any of them oh i'm sure some are already lost we'll we'll make our own then make it look good yeah you still have the z8 right i still have the z8 yes yes i have to collect them all like pokemon okay we're almost there what you got left well the x5 and the m3 okay yeah or three series any three series but i want an m3 how's the m5 doing it's at the paint shop oh okay well we got a clutch for it so that's good news as soon as it gets here do the clutch rear struts breaks all the way around oil change and she's all yours great all right well you want to get this thing on the lift yes okay front strut is like completely blown oh perfect yeah and these tires look uh they're from second world war i guess so oh geez i've never seen a broken bushing on a ether take the light away yeah that's yeah that's ruined yeah okay so both struts uh nothing here you got brakes i do have brake pads and rotors left yeah you do hello is that a sensor yeah but it's not broken so okay oh boy the ball cover is so bad um your oil filter housing is not leaking it's just the uh valve cover and your venus hose oh that's good news yeah yeah pretty rust in the back and obviously you need shots in the back too yeah so what about my brakes you think they just need a bleed uh yeah i would just say um but look your ears are not even engaging at all right the rotors are all rusty huh yeah there's no brakes whatsoever in the back how does that happen uh we're gonna have to bleed them and see yeah you have zero brakes in the back they're not sweeping at all well obviously something's doing some stopping so i would say and we'll bleed the clutch too class felt good yeah clutch feel fine so i would say we just uh do the easy stuff bleeding them and okay solid it's inside so obviously we need tires mm-hmm all four of them yeah oh yeah awful they're forced in the back uh this one has a nail oh well i mean my nails not yeah probably the least of that one's worries holy moses that's uh do you wanna do some burnouts before you change them let's well somebody got their money's worth out of the tires huh okay well typical with bmw owners at least smart bmw owners they know right when to trade them in and i think uh well this one got stolen or repossessed or whatever just right in time wow i also want new badges and i know they run like 40 bucks a pop times four right or bmw oh you're already clicking away so this isn't something that you're just going to uh spitball huh no it's a little more involved here yeah there's a lot of stuff we were so busy freaking out over the tires and brakes i didn't notice the spare situation here which is a cute little donut mounted like a truck from the 50s or something i've never seen this on a car this side of the new millennium but it seems loose johnny yeah it shouldn't be that good oh so that could just fall out huh oh you're printing okay it's a decent list it thirty three hundred dollars wow uh okay well nothing like ridiculously expensive other than the struts are pretty uh yeah those are for uh for genuine oem struts are there cheaper options uh we can get the beast the befores yeah definitely mm-hmm all right so we can save a little money there but i still for a 2 000 e3 that looks like that i also found some used seats for 500 dollars which would really make this thing look a lot better the top has a little tear in the back glass that's the glass alone is like almost 500 bucks to do so great so basically add another grand to this and you have a somewhat presentable z3 with well paint that still looks like that but yeah why am i doing this i have no idea i want to have them all and all the problems that come with it but it's still a cheap c3 with a stick and the right engine we still have the z8 right yes why are you so worried about the z8 well the goal is to get them all out on the track okay and do a magazine style shootout with all of them if i took this thing as is with the tires on the rear brakes i would kill somebody you cannot even make it to the to the highway so uh well i've been driving on the highway that's what's terrifying um so i'll leave it with you because i absolutely shouldn't drive anymore with the brakes like that that's uh i can't believe i drove it as long as i did that's a death wish yeah so have fun and hopefully i find some more bmws for you to finish out the set yeah thank you for watching you\n"