BMW E34 535i Sport Auto
Nov 2nd, 2007 by Tim Skipper
I bought this car for £2,000 in August 2003 from a private ad in the Autotrader whilst I was working on a job in Southend-On-Sea. Because I was making the daily 210 mile round-trip from my home in Norwich to the clients site, I wanted something cheap that was comfy and would be a nice place to sit for 3-4 hours a day. It also saved piling more miles on my other car, which at the time was a Subaru Impreza turbo.
This was a 1990 model E34 535i Sport with 97,200 miles on it. It was a proper factory Sport model too, with the M-Tech suspension, multi-adjustable cloth sports seats and a limited slip differential.
It had the nastiest wheels on it I’d ever seen though, and as it turned out, were dangerously cracked! I replaced them with a set of original E34 M5 Throwing Star alloys, which really looked the part.
The E34 5 series BMW was a proper car built by engineers rather than accountants, and I really enjoyed owning and driving it. It took me to Southend and back every day for 5 months, through France to visit my parents twice and for a while did a sterling, if rather thirsty job, as tow-car for my Caterham 7 race car.
It was thirsty though. On a run it would do mid 20s to the gallon, but around town it was more like 12-14mpg! Once I started working locally again it’s days were always going to be numbered for this fact alone, but I did keep it in storage for 6 months before selling it, I liked it that much. It had over 120,000 miles on it when it went.
The number plate it wore, A8 RCC, came with the car. I later sold this on eBay for £200 to a chap with an Audi A8.
It let me down big-time only once. Almost home from Southend it snapped a couple of rocker arms. That cost me £1,100 to have fixed at a local independant garage. Ouch. I also did some bushes and a set of brake disks while I had it.
This was the car I traded for the awesome E30 M3. With hindsight, I should have just kept it forever and bought the M3 as well.