1991 M5

It was sold on Ebay.. believe it or not. Now the question is if they'll get paid for it.

The E34 M5 is considered the last "pure" M car - one with the hand-made engine from the M division. All the later M cars are really "M"arketing cars - come off the same production line as your standard BMW.

Nice car - I watched the auction. KBB is probably more often wrong than right - especially when it comes to limited production cars such as this. Too few sales are reported for accurate numbers to be generated.

C'mon. The M series engines are *very* different from the standard ones. If the actual cars are assembled on the same production line - but using different parts - so what?

I've heard different stories on this. I think the M5 car bodies are assembled at one plant, probably on the same assembly line as the standard 5 series but the V-10 engines are manufactured and assembled at the same facility as other special purpose engines, including BMW's Formula 1 engines. They are then shipped for installation at the car assembly plant.

RCE

I'd agree with 'admin' that KBB and the other services tend to miss the boat on some of the low production vehicles. They tend to quote #'s that the average person might pay where as 'aficionado's might be willing to pay substantially more. Sometimes for little more than emotional reasons. I really like that 91 M5 myself.

Cheers, Chris

Agree, KBB, Edmunds, Intellichoice all do this. For example, supposedly only

That's because of sample skew. If you browse web sites for BMW enthusiasts, you'll find more people looking for performance-oriented cars than not. The typical E46 3-series is a 325i automatic, but if your only exposure to the market is E46 Fanatics you'd think every E46 was a Jet Black 330i on 19" CSL replicas or an Imola Red ZHP. The people seeking an E34 five-speed are relatively few and far between, and that's what the market reflects. They just happen to congregate on E34 forums more. Heck, Chicago is crawling with BMW dealers and *nobody* had a Jet Black Z4 with manual trans when I was shopping. I flew out of state to get mine, and settled for Sapphire Black (which is nice, but doesn't match my 3!). But if you hang out on

-- "I'm...fine." "You were just hit by lightning, you're stark naked, and you can't remember your own name. You've got a fairly loose definition of fine."

The thing that immediately jumps out at me is that $22k (assuming US dollars) is not that much. Certainly not for a mint condition, fully loaded and most importantly low mileage M5.

The trouble with many M5's of that era is that they all have more miles on then than the Millenium Falcon - and you can almost guarantee that those miles will not have been done at a gentle pace either.

Lots of e34 M5's with 150k miles on sell for about =A36-8k. Just looked up on Autotrader, and there's a 1991 registered M5 with 135k miles on asking price just under =A37k.

The gauge I use is "is it crowding the newer model in price?" For instance, I was shopping for a low mileage Z3, say 2001 or 2002. It soon became apparent that most people were asking Z4 money for good Z3s, and after test-driving the newer car it was clear which car was better value for money. To this day I see Z3 asking prices higher than what I paid for my Z4, though I don't know if people are getting near that much. There's a nice '91 M5 near me for $23k with 70k. There are also some nice 2000 M5s around for $26k, with similar miles. Unless you're collecting, the newer cars make more sense. epbrown

-- "I'm...fine." "You were just hit by lightning, you're stark naked, and you can't remember your own name. You've got a fairly loose definition of fine."

I imagine it's like Alpina. They ship out their internal parts to the BMW factory then accept a nearly complete car back in Germany. There they add the custom Alpina internal options. They used to do it so that they received a full donor car from BMW sans engine, and then fit everything at Alpina but it is more cost effective to send the main bits to the plant.

for it.

I've never heard anybody say that before. I'm not sure if M cars still have hand-made engines (Alpina's do) but they are certainly no less an 'M' car because of it.

The 'M' is worth far more than just a brand name. These are genuinely different vehicles.

The M was just as much a 'marketing' car for the original M5 as it is for the current ones - as branding is for all products.

I agree with Sam, "M" means more than simply 'hand built engine' it's a serious performance car. I personally cannot imagine anyone who's spent time in a recent "M" car saying that they weren't real "M cars".

To each his own though.

Chris

My son has an '06 550 i. It's a fantastic performing car with the new 4.8 L, 360 hp V8. I have an '06 M5. As nice as my son's car is -- it's no M5. Marketing it is not.

RCE

Actually - I own my second M car at the moment (E36/M3) and am considering my 3rd (E46/M3 or E39/M5)..

Do the M's provide more performance? Yes.. but the E36/M3 in the US simply used a bigger engine (3.2L vs 2.8L) that was tuned a bit more aggressively than the standard 328i. They did increase spring rates, change the shocks and beef up the anti-roll bars.. but it is still very much like a standard 328i. And the car AND engine came right out of the same product line as the standard E36 cars. Ditto on the M-Roadster and somewhat on the M-Coupe (there was a non-M variant where the only real difference was trim level and the engine size/tuning..) It was and is a "mass-produced" car.

My point being - the original M cars (M1, E30/M3) were basically handbuilt cars made for a small audience. BMW has taken the M name and applied it in general to any of their "high performance" vehicles... handbuilt (which they aren't) or mass-produced.

This isn't a BAD thing - but it is a dilution of what M originally stood for.. "Motorsports" - ie - racing. The E30/M3 was probably the purest example of "Motorsports" - it was designed for racing where it had to be a car available for purchase by the general public, so BMW made it available to the general public. None of the M's that followed it had that purity of design. M = a "M"arketing term now - not Motorsports.

I understand what you're saying, and it makes perfect sense. I was ignorant, for lack of a better term, about how 'special' the original M cars were. I've always admired them but didn't realize that they were a sort of homogulation car. I'll give them even greater respect now.

Thanks for the info!

Chris

Actually - a lot more than 1,300 E28/M5's were made - just not imported to the US. BMW made the "M535" in Europe from around 1983 on. The ones imported to the US were supposed to be limited to 500 examples.. but they sold well so BMW brought more in. This became the basis of a successful class-action lawsuit since BMW diluted the 'exclusivity" of the car. - In other words - the lawsuit determined it was "M"arketing. :)

I'd put them half-way to "M"arketing - to some extent the US releases were an effort by BMW to get rid of the left over E24 and E38 bodies at the end of production (marketing) - although the engines WERE special and not closely based on a production engine, plus the cars did get final assembly at the Motorsport production facilities - not on a normal assembly line.

So - only 1/2 "M"arketing IMHO (and you are certainly free to differ.)

The E28/M5 is a favorite of a lot of people - since the car is actually probably smaller than a current E90 3 series, and feels quite nimble, although in today's market - the engine power isn't a lot to write home about.