My first BMW
I started this blog, so that I could tell my many stories related to BMW’s. I’ve owned BMW’s since 1971. Actually, my father bought my f irst BMW in 1968. It was a red 2800 sedan with a slush box tranny-back then the words slush box was the correct description for an auto trans. At the time nobody in the states had really heard much about BMW. The first 1600/2002’s were just showing up and the big 4 door sedans were really rare. I bought this car from my dad shortly before graduating from college. It had served him well and was now in my hands. I think it had around 60000 miles on the clock when I took it over. After a slow rollover accident-not my fault, we had the car repaired. I made the fateful bad decision to change the color of the car to blue. So not long after,  it became a combination of blue and red. Bad choice. It was something I never repeated again-a color change.
So I have many fond memories of the early days with this car. I’ll be sharing them as we go along and many other stories. Here’s my list of BMW’s owned:
1968 2800; 1974 2002, 1977 530i, 1971 1600, 1970 2800CS, 1974 2002, 1972 3.0CSi, 1972Tii, 1972 Bavaria, 1991 K75S, and currently a 2000 540i. Only two of these were bought new, the first 74 2002 and the 91 K75S.
So many stories to follow.
Super post, Need to mark it on Digg
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The best old BMW that I ever owned was a 2002tii. I bought from a doctor in LA who restored old BMW’s. I can’t remember his name, but he got into BMW restorations by accident more than by design. He told me that he was restoring an old 2002 and that he needed to find a replacement bumper. The price was somewhere north of $1000 and it needed to be repaired. Instead, he found an old complete 2002 for less money than the replacement bumper. That was the beginning of his restoration business. He had a warehouse that was huge and entirely full of old BMW parts. I can’t remember where in LA, though it was close to the beach. If anyone knows who this is, please send along a comment. I’d like to reconnect with him. This was about 10 years ago.
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Jordan765 Reply:
June 1st, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Cool Story!
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I had a 2002tii as well. great little car, although I found that it needed more maintenance than other 2002’s. I bought my first 2002 in 1974 fom a dealer in Albuquerque, NM. At the time, it was THE car to own. I lived in Farmington, a few miles to the northwest. So visits to the dealer for service were a real journey through some pretty rugged country. The highway between the two cities had some dubious nickname like Death Road or something like that. You were constantly in some sort of danger along this road and, god forbid, you were out there at night. Anyway, the 2002 served me well for seveal years. Back then, it was fun adding stuff like a custom stereo/radio or driving lights. I never did anything other than simple add-ons. Since then I have owned several 2002’s. When I haven’t had one and I see one on the road, I immmediately get the urge. It’s harder now to find a good one though.
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More on my 2800 sedan. The car was a bit of a mystery. My father bought it “new” from the local Denver dealer on 3rd and Broadway. But i noticed early on that the hood had been painted and thee were some obvious stone chips on the leading edge of the hood that had been painted over. I remember pointing this out to my father. He just ignored me. So i suspect that the car had been used or demoed so place. The other odd thing bout the car was that the interior was done in vinyl. I found later that supposedly no 2800 had vinyl but rather leather. The 2500 did in fact come with vinyl. So I suspected that this car was either re-badged as a 2800 or there were a few 2800’s that slipped thru without the leather. The other issue was the rear suspension. This car had some sort of air shocks that finally gave out at around 80,000 miles. At the time, I was living in the Seattle area. I took the car to the local BMW dealer. They were perplexed by these shocks and really had no factory replacements for them. So another mystery!! They replaced the existing shocks with new Konis, but they were clearly incorrect since they raised the rear of the car a good 2 or 3 inches. The car looked like it had been jacked up-not my favorite look. They said it was all they could do, so I drove off with my new Konis looking like I was driving a BMW set up for drag racing.
Anybody have any ideas regarding this mystery BMW 2800 sedan, please advise.
all for now
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