Should I buy this '93 325i?

Have you checked how much the insurance will be?

I'd mention two points:

Cars made after late 94 are a lot better put together inside. My 95 328i touring is MUCH better made than my old 93 318iS. Mechanically they're all fine though.

If you want a manual you'll always regret getting an auto.

To the insurance question, yes, I have found that insurance is actually cheaper with this car than the one I have now.

I still have a little while to find a manual, I think you're right about regretting the automatic. With 75k miles, though, I'm not likely to find anything like it for that sort of money. Then again, most of the traffic around here is stop and go, so there's not too much fun in a manual with that traffic.

On Oct 16, 7:29 pm, "joex444" wrote: odometer not broken

You'll mean a coil pack gone. They do fail occasionally, especially the earlier ones but the 325s have a sporty sound to them, especially if all the baffles have rusted away from inside the muffler (look up the pipes and you can see)

If I were you I'd look for a post '94, 2 door with manual transmission, although if you really want an auto then that's up to you. You can pretty much drive these around in 3rd everywhere anyway :-)

Here in the UK old 4 door 3 series are generally cheap as chips.

Steptronic in '93?

I'm not sure if its a coil pack or a distributor. The websites I've seen only list distributors for '93s. These are cheaper than the wires, for some reason.

Yea, I'm not sure if that was an option, but I tested it out and it had that. Maybe it was a US only thing?

Coil pack, no E36s had a distributor except the pre-93 M40 1.6/1.8.

I thought Steptronic came in with the E39 in 96/7. And on ZF boxes only initially.