How I bought a 1976 BMW 2002 for less than half the seller’s asking price Pt IV

Part IV: Finalizing the BMW 2002 Transaction, Clean Up and Winter Storage

I couldn’t believe he actually said “seven hundred bucks.”
“Well, that’s good, because that’s exactly how much I brought with me” I said as I reached in to my pocket and pullet out a wad of twenty dollar bills.
“I’ll take it”
We shook hands, to you know, fully solidify the deal, in that old fashioned sort of way.

Good looking BMW 2002, from a distance.

I must say, I was awfully proud of myself as he went over and sat down at his desk to get the necessary paperwork together. The tax and any title fees were included in that $700 figure. It was $700 OTD (out the door), the very technical car industry term for ‘all taxes, title fees, and any other fees that might come up, everything included’.

In a little less than twenty minutes I had the paperwork in hand and was driving away in a very cool, if terminally rusty, BMW 2002. I would have a friend drive me back to the dealer the next day to pick up my car, the car I drove there in, the next afternoon.

Ugly up close.

I drove gingerly back to the warehouse where I would store the car for the winter, the idle was still very rough due to the poorly tuned Weber carb, but it was a fun car to drive and it handled well, despite the very weak shock towers in the trunk. I could actually hear creaking and cracking as I drove or hit any bumps. It was just a matter of time until the shocks came all the way through the trunk and the rear wheel wells sat on the tires.

Luckily I made it back to the warehouse. I pulled it in and spent the next few hours working on the car. I found a Weber carburetor manual in the trunk. The instructions seemed easy enough. I let the car run and adjusted the carb with a screw driver, after a few minutes it was idling smoothly. I’m NO mechanic, I’ll tell you that, I wish I was, but I just don’t have much experience, so I was really happy I was able to tackle that project. I was really surprised the guy selling the car didn’t take a few minutes to do the same thing. I guess he was more comfortable with the Bosch fuel injection systems in all the water-cooled Volkswagens littering his lot.

Tuning the Weber downdraft carburator.

I washed and detailed the car inside, outside, lots of cleaning under the hood. When I was all done I just stood back and looked at the car. The metallic blue color has always been a good color for BMWs of this era, 3.0 CS cars look great that same blue color. If I squinted at the car from about 20 feet it looked perfect, but it clearly had some needs if you stood next to it with your eyes wide open, but it presented well. It had Bilstein blue shocks front and rear, a Momo steering wheel, someone had really cared for it at one point. It had the look of a car that someone put a lot of money into about ten years ago, lost interest in the car and then just let it sit, probably outside, for a long time.

It was a few days before Thanksgiving, the Minnesota winter was on its way. My plan was to hold onto it until the spring and then put it on eBay. Present the car to the national market, disclose all of its shortcomings and hope there was more good than bad about the car so someone might buy it and bring it back to its original glory.

Over the next few months I’d go to the warehouse on the weekends and start the car up. I’d open up the dock doors where trucks would back in to load so I wouldn’t asphyxiate myself and do laps around the warehouse. There was a big clear ‘track’ around rows of pallets in the middle of the warehouse. I could shift out of first gear, into second and then just into third before I had to shift back into second and slam on the brakes to make the turn around the pallets. It was basically a big rectangle I would lap in this 40,000 square foot warehouse. By early April I had put about 8 miles on the car, just doing laps in the warehouse.