My first toy car: E46 325Ci convertible Tourmaline Violet
Discussion
I have never been much of a ‘car guy’. I don’t know much about cars, I haven’t driven many cars, I just don’t know that much about cars. But a few years ago I moved to the countryside from London, and the amount of driving my family did increased from about 6k miles a year to more like 25k miles. And it turned out that this sparked an interest I never knew I had.
Despite OTT levels of reading stuff on this forum, I still haven’t got around to upgrading our two family cars. Now we do a lot more miles, it makes sense to allocate more resources to having better ones. Instead of doing that however, over the past few months I got sidetracked into doing something more interesting and enjoyable, which is buying a car I don’t need and will barely use, just for fun.
I have never done anything like this before. I had three thoughts when doing it which I like to pretend are logical.
Firstly I’m renovating my house, and we’re having a garage built as part of it. I like the idea of having a ‘nice car’ to go in the garage but I have no real idea what I mean by that or what I want. Perhaps I like the idea of a convertible, perhaps a coupe, perhaps a hard top convertible, perhaps I want a manual car, perhaps I don’t, perhaps I want a fast car, perhaps I don’t, perhaps I want something I can fit my family in, etc etc etc etc etc.
Secondly I know I know the square root of f
k all about cars and the chances of me making optimal purchasing decisions in relation to cars are low. I’m not a particularly practical person and in my professional life I make spreadsheets, not anything tangible. So instead of spending ‘proper money’ on a car I wanted to buy a relatively inexpensive ‘toy car’, with the idea being that when I make mistakes they won’t be massively expensive ones, and I can try to learn somewhat cheaply.
Thirdly I’ve come up with the idea of going on a road trip to the Highlands with my brother. My 2014 Skoda Yeti family car wasn’t going to cut it, we needed something else. After a bit of searching on here I decided I wanted a cheap old manual BMW convertible with a good 6-cylinder engine, four seats and both a hardtop and softtop.
Anyway TLDR version is I found this on Autotrader. It was the first car I went to visit, and reader, after a short test drive in which I pretended I knew what I was looking for when I actually didn’t, I bought it.
Despite OTT levels of reading stuff on this forum, I still haven’t got around to upgrading our two family cars. Now we do a lot more miles, it makes sense to allocate more resources to having better ones. Instead of doing that however, over the past few months I got sidetracked into doing something more interesting and enjoyable, which is buying a car I don’t need and will barely use, just for fun.
I have never done anything like this before. I had three thoughts when doing it which I like to pretend are logical.
Firstly I’m renovating my house, and we’re having a garage built as part of it. I like the idea of having a ‘nice car’ to go in the garage but I have no real idea what I mean by that or what I want. Perhaps I like the idea of a convertible, perhaps a coupe, perhaps a hard top convertible, perhaps I want a manual car, perhaps I don’t, perhaps I want a fast car, perhaps I don’t, perhaps I want something I can fit my family in, etc etc etc etc etc.
Secondly I know I know the square root of f
k all about cars and the chances of me making optimal purchasing decisions in relation to cars are low. I’m not a particularly practical person and in my professional life I make spreadsheets, not anything tangible. So instead of spending ‘proper money’ on a car I wanted to buy a relatively inexpensive ‘toy car’, with the idea being that when I make mistakes they won’t be massively expensive ones, and I can try to learn somewhat cheaply.Thirdly I’ve come up with the idea of going on a road trip to the Highlands with my brother. My 2014 Skoda Yeti family car wasn’t going to cut it, we needed something else. After a bit of searching on here I decided I wanted a cheap old manual BMW convertible with a good 6-cylinder engine, four seats and both a hardtop and softtop.
Anyway TLDR version is I found this on Autotrader. It was the first car I went to visit, and reader, after a short test drive in which I pretended I knew what I was looking for when I actually didn’t, I bought it.
Here’s a picture of it when I got it home. Not quite as neat as in the glossy photos, and when the guy I bought it from drove it round to drop it off, a brake light came on the dashboard. But I was still pleased to see it.
I had googled E46s and read this forum extensively, so had watched some youtube videos about radiators and rear subframes and stuff like that, but in practice I didn’t have enough experience to have any idea whether this is a decent example or not.
I paid £5,500 for it, and it had 68,950 miles when I bought it. I’m the fourth owner but in practice the third proper owner as the guy I bought it off didn’t have it for long. The history of the car looks honest to my untrained eye, and the lowish mileage is because it was sat for five years pretty much without use.
I like the colour, which I understand is rare. I think it needed to be a special order from the factory when new. I also like that it hasn’t been modded, which a lot of the cheaper cars for sale of the same model were when I was looking at them.
The first thing I did was book it into our local BMW specialist. There were a reassuring number of E46s in the car park when I got down there. The MOT history on the car seemed alright but I figured the car was likely to need a decent amount of recommissioning. I asked the guys at the garage to tell me all the things they would do to it if it was their own car and they wanted to make it a nice example.
A month later, and with £2,280 spent at the garage on repairs, the car has a new clutch, new radiator, new front suspension, a new brake pad sensor (and therefore no warning lights on the dash), new brake pipes, a wire brushed and cleaned subframe, lots of new bolts and a few other new bits. The mechanics said it was a pretty decent example to start with, and now it’s in pretty good shape from here mechanically.
I haven’t driven it up the Highlands yet, indeed I haven’t got any further than the next village in it yet, but with spring coming around it’s about to start getting its use. There is a whole bunch of cosmetic stuff I think I could do, starting with a good wash. And it will need four new tyres.
I thought typing up this thread would be fun, partly as I’ve enjoyed reading similar threads for others, and partly because it will be fun for proper car enthusiasts to realise just now naive someone can be in buying a car like this (!).
I had googled E46s and read this forum extensively, so had watched some youtube videos about radiators and rear subframes and stuff like that, but in practice I didn’t have enough experience to have any idea whether this is a decent example or not.
I paid £5,500 for it, and it had 68,950 miles when I bought it. I’m the fourth owner but in practice the third proper owner as the guy I bought it off didn’t have it for long. The history of the car looks honest to my untrained eye, and the lowish mileage is because it was sat for five years pretty much without use.
I like the colour, which I understand is rare. I think it needed to be a special order from the factory when new. I also like that it hasn’t been modded, which a lot of the cheaper cars for sale of the same model were when I was looking at them.
The first thing I did was book it into our local BMW specialist. There were a reassuring number of E46s in the car park when I got down there. The MOT history on the car seemed alright but I figured the car was likely to need a decent amount of recommissioning. I asked the guys at the garage to tell me all the things they would do to it if it was their own car and they wanted to make it a nice example.
A month later, and with £2,280 spent at the garage on repairs, the car has a new clutch, new radiator, new front suspension, a new brake pad sensor (and therefore no warning lights on the dash), new brake pipes, a wire brushed and cleaned subframe, lots of new bolts and a few other new bits. The mechanics said it was a pretty decent example to start with, and now it’s in pretty good shape from here mechanically.
I haven’t driven it up the Highlands yet, indeed I haven’t got any further than the next village in it yet, but with spring coming around it’s about to start getting its use. There is a whole bunch of cosmetic stuff I think I could do, starting with a good wash. And it will need four new tyres.
I thought typing up this thread would be fun, partly as I’ve enjoyed reading similar threads for others, and partly because it will be fun for proper car enthusiasts to realise just now naive someone can be in buying a car like this (!).
Congratulations, that's a superb colour combination. 
Back in 2014 I bought an E46 325ti Compact as a daily. It hadn't quite reached 80K miles, but within a month the radiator was leaking so it got a cooling system refresh. It turned out the bottom of the radiator was the shape of a banana!
But it drove really well and I often wish I had kept it but I had some strange urge to have a Touring.
It was my second straight 6 petrol BMW and I seem to have become addicted to them as I'm on numbers 5 and 6 now.
As someone suggested a set of MV1 wheels would look good, or a set of MV2s. If you can find them Style 32s are a bit lighter than the other 18" options.
Anyway it will make a great car for you to enjoy your trip to Scotland in.
Back in 2014 I bought an E46 325ti Compact as a daily. It hadn't quite reached 80K miles, but within a month the radiator was leaking so it got a cooling system refresh. It turned out the bottom of the radiator was the shape of a banana!
But it drove really well and I often wish I had kept it but I had some strange urge to have a Touring.
It was my second straight 6 petrol BMW and I seem to have become addicted to them as I'm on numbers 5 and 6 now.
As someone suggested a set of MV1 wheels would look good, or a set of MV2s. If you can find them Style 32s are a bit lighter than the other 18" options.
Anyway it will make a great car for you to enjoy your trip to Scotland in.
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff