Like many adults, I yearn for a car from my childhood. That car is my father's GC Mazda 626 GT sedan. The thing I loved most about the car was its sleeper status; its subdued styling and straight lines easily masked the 2.0L turbocharged beast underneath. It is not fast by today's standards, cranking out only 120 horsepower and 150 pound-feet of torque. But especially on days we were late for church, my father made it fast.
Until a catastrophic timing belt failure hit my daily driver, I was generally uneducated and uninterested in cars. I bought a Honda Civic on reputation and fuel efficiency alone and always paid for oil changes and whatever service my arbitrarily chosen mechanic told me I needed. When I (perhaps foolishly) decided to repair the timing belt failure damage, my sticker shock at the repair bill motivated me to begin educating myself about auto systems and repair. I have always been an iterative learner: try, fail, try again with gained knowledge. I decided I wanted a manual transmission car on which I would teach myself auto repair.
As you can imagine, it's almost impossible to find one of those Mazdas for sale here in the salt belt as they are about 30 years old at this point. They do not have much of an enthusiast following keeping them alive, either. Discouraged, I started looking for cars with a similar "sleeper" quality. Driving a friend's late-model Acura TSX was a revelation that some luxury cars were more than just coddling technology and actually were high performance machines. Perhaps because of that, most of my early searches focused Hondas, Acuras, and Mazdas. Then a friend suggested I look at older BMWs.
I was not sure if I could maintain any BMW, even an older model. All I knew about BMW at that point was the German performance car stereotype of high maintenance costs. Then I discovered the community of seemingly normal people that managed to maintain their own older BMWs and talk about them on internet forums and the myriad of vendors still selling parts for those old models. The community seemed like the same kind of normal people that run Mac OS on PC hardware: small but dedicated group of people willing to go to great lengths to figure things out and share that knowledge because they are passionate about flexibility and craftsmanship.
I would've preferred a BMW from the late 80's or early 90's, but they have become quite collectible and expensive at this point. Many people suggested looking somewhere around the late 90's E36 3-series or E39 5-series. For sleeper status, a 5-series probably would've made more sense. I knew that if I was going to spend thousands of dollars to buy one then I wanted a powerful one. The M5 was very attractive, but had terrible gas mileage. I also wasn't a huge fan of all the now-outdated technology it provided; I wanted something as simple as my no-frills Honda Civic. The E36 M3 got about 27 mpg on the highway and kept the luxury comforts to as much of a minimum as they could be in the late 90s, so I started looking for one of those.
Of course I didn't want just any E36 M3. I wanted a sedan with manual transmission and cruise control. This was a difficult combination to find. The sedan M3 was only available in 1997 and 1998, and not many remain with both stick shift and the optional cruise control. Eventually I found one that looked good in Florida. It wasn't perfect, but it was a southern car for a good price. Looking back, I realize I would've had an easier time with a slightly more expensive and better maintained car. I don't regret having to learn so much so early in my ownership as I did primarily get it to teach myself new skills, but there are days when I wish the previous owner had replaced more wear items before I bought it.
Between when I bought it in February and now I have:
- Learned how to actually drive manual transmission
- Replaced the valve cover gasket
- Replaced the rear trailing arm bushings
- Replaced rear exhaust hangers
- Replaced the windshield cowl cover
- Replaced the rubber gaskets around the door handles
- Replaced the rubber gasket around the rear windscreen
- Reverted to stock shift knob and e-brake handle
- Installed aftermarket shift and e-brake boot
I've learned there's never a point where you are "done." There's always something else to fix, replace, tweak. It's not a cheap hobby in terms of money or time, but I believe it was worth it for the satisfaction I feel fixing and driving it.
