Registered: 06/12/02
Posts: 24353
Loc: Fuck ya'll, I'm from Texas.
I'm looking at E36's to replace the Civic as a daily driver. I'm just wondering what I should expect out of a 10-15 year old BMW to keep it running. And where are you people finding such clean 5 speed cars? Everyone I look at is beat to shit or a 318 (Not that I'm entirely opposed to one with gas being as expensive as it is).
Big things to watch for are the cooling system and suspension. My e36 and e39 are very easy to work on and are very solid cars, I see no problem with either making it to 200k+ miles. I hit the magic 75k mark this year in the e39 and spent about $2k on maintenance on the e39, most was small DIY stuff but the ABS module hit the wallet pretty hard.
are we talking m3 here? the good thing about those is that most are very well maintained, it's one of those cars that owners usually show a lot of love
my e36 was very easy on the wallet. had a cam sensor go out and bought a used one for 20 bucks. other than that it was rock solid. if you do decide to get one, don't go overboard with preventive maintenance like everyone suggests, easy to run up a big tab without really doing anything at all. take care of problems as they come up and it should be a cheap car to own. i love the e36 m3's mang... it's as solid a choice as you can go with, the handling is ridiculously intuitive and the power isn't half bad either. most fun daily driver i've owned so far hands down. sometimes i debate getting another one <3
