Any thoughts on this possible purchase???

[3seriesbimmer]

driving home today I saw a 1977 E21 320i for sale. It has been for sitting for a while. Ended up knocking on the door and talking to the owner who has a 1982 e21 as a daily commuter. He didnt know too much about it. He says it runs fine and everything works inside and out. It has LOTS of surface rust but nothing deep or in the door jambs etc.
126,xxx original miles
4 speed replaced with 5 speed
new tires
new muffler
400 dollars or BO. he said he would go to 300 dollars (includes MANY spare parts)
BMW CCA sticker in window from early to mid 80's it looks
I was thinking of this as a project car/winter rat

One thing I was confused on was the headlights. I did some reading and it seems that the 4cyl models were replaced with small 6's at the end of 1977. He said it was a 4 cyl. and the back badge says 320i BUT it has twin headlights rather than the single ones that the 4cyl.s are supposed to have. It says only 6cyl. models had the twin headlights.

ANYWAY...any input on this year and model????? 400 dollars even if I were to sell parts off the thing OR use it for the winter I think I would get my 400 bucks out of it.Hell I have a 600 dollar scratch on my 02 325i to fix right now...this car is cheaper than that.




:dunno: :dunno: :dunno: :dunno:

[Clarke]

I think you might have been looking at european specs.The US E21 3 series(70s - early 80s) all had 4 cylinders and quad headlights.If you find any with different specs it was a grey market import. If you are lucky the thermal reactor has been swapped out at some point(big thing on exhaust manifold),a big turkey of emmision controls on bimmers of that era.Hot,expensive and lots of backpressure,being enthusiast owned in the past it may be gone already.They were not rocketships but not bad overall.At the time there was much hue and cry as many saw them as a step in the wrong direction compared to the 2002s(people complaining about new models is not new for bimmers). Good Luck!

[3seriesbimmer]

thanks for the input Clarke!