It is rare when one of my Facebook friends scoops me in looking for cars on Craigslist, as I am always looking for cars on Craigslist. But in mid-December, scoop me one of them did—and in my own back yard. I received a post from Patrick King with a link to a CL ad for a 2002tii in a town in suburban Boston only about ten miles from me. When I checked the ad, I saw that it had been up for less than 24 hours, so I forgave myself for whatever short lapse had occurred in my CL obsessive-compulsive routine.
More important than my wounded pride, the car looked quite interesting: a ’72 tii in, according to the ad, “original Agave green,” with the Kugelfischer-injected engine and plastic intake plenums that a ’72 tii should have still clearly present. The ad stated that the seller had owned the car since 1989, it had been in storage for fifteen years, and was last started four years ago. The seller reportedly had clear title, and the car was reportedly “an original California car with California pink slip.” The price was $12,500.
“This is a non-running, matching-numbers survivor,” the ad continued, “no rust anywhere, fixer-upper-with-a-little-TLC, and priced so. Change the fluids/fuel and charge the battery and you are driving. Tire-kickers need not apply.”
From the photos, it appeared that the car had some minor dings and creases in the body panels and was a little shabby from its sojourn in storage, but looked complete and largely original save the presence of a “snorkel” nose.
Okay, class, welcome to the first lecture of TII 101. Carbureted 2002s had a tube—a “snorkel”—through the right side of the nose, to which the factory air-filter assembly was connected. Tii’s had a different air-intake setup that didn’t use this inlet, and thus an original tii nose has no snorkel. Fairly early on, like in the 1970s, non-snorkel noses went out of production, but the only replacement 2002 noses available from BMW had snorkels, as these would work on both carbureted and injected cars. So a snorkel nose on a tii indicates that the nose has been replaced, almost certainly due to collision or rust repair.
Over the decades, there have been posts on forums that refer to claims by original owners of tii’s that their cars came from the factory with snorkel noses, but many forum experts seem to find more plausible the explanation that the cars may have been damaged in shipping and the dealer installed a snorkel nose than the idea that the snorkel nose was installed on a tii at the factory.
With the appreciating value of round-taillight tii’s, many people now know to look for the absence of a snorkel nose. Along with a “numbers matching” engine, the snorkel has become something to obsess over when looking at a car. Your professor’s humble opinion is that, all factors being equal, a non-snorkel nose—and a numbers-matching engine—do drive up the value of a tii, but all factors are never equal. You’re looking at one car at a time, not at two cars identical except one has the snorkel and the other doesn’t. Overall condition, lack of rust, originality, whether body repairs and repainting were done correctly, and other factors should trump the absence or presence of the snorkel, or the numbers-matching engine, for that matter.
(End of lecture. Apples go on the right corner of your teacher’s desk. Assigned reading for next week is every tii ad on eBay and Bring A Trailer from the last three years. Yes, the comments, too; extra credit for correcting their grammar.)
Though the car looked like something right up my alley, there were some strange things in the ad. To begin with, if a highly collectible vintage car last ran only four years ago, and if all it needs in order to be drivable is a battery and fresh gas, why wouldn’t you, as the seller, pay the short money to get that done, since a drivable car is worth dramatically more than a dead one? If a statement like “change the fluids/fuel and charge the battery and you are driving” is true, it makes no sense, at least to me, that the seller didn’t do it. Therefore it’s much more likely, in my opinion, that at best it’s simple sales-and-marketing BS; at worst, it raises the specter that perhaps the seller doesn’t want the car to be driven because he knows that there are major problems he doesn’t want uncovered.
Now, of course, this was all just conjecture on my part. Buying a non-running car is a glorious crapshoot; if it starts up easily and becomes drivable without major time and monetary investment, it’s the best feeling in the world. But if you pay big money and discover major problems—like no compression in one cylinder—it sours you on the game.
However, ’72 tii’s so close to home don’t fall from trees, and in the current climate of upward mobility of round-taillight tii values (the imperfect but very pretty, virtually rust-free, and well-sorted ’72 tii I helped my friend Mike sell a few months back went for $23,500), $12,500 is a not unreasonable asking price for a rust-free non-running tii—if it is indeed rust-free. There were glancing pics of the rear shock towers, but no photographs of the rocker panels or the undercarriage to prove the rust-free claim. And even if there were, there’s no substitute for a close look.
So I called.
In short, never have I had a less satisfying conversation with a seller. He wasn’t rude, but he was certainly brusque. He was very definite that the car had “no rust,” yet was evasive when I asked point-blank if he’d recently had the car up on a lift and inspected the floor pans and frame rails. And he seemed to have particular energy behind the “no tire-kickers” policy, saying that he didn’t have time to answer a hail of questions and pull the car out of storage for everyone who wanted to look at it. It was so at odds with the way that I deal with interested parties when I’m trying to sell a car that I finally offered, “Well, let me think about it, and if and when I’m ready to deal with you in the serious fashion that you obviously want, I’ll call you back.”
He said, “What does serious mean to you? To me it means showing up with cash.” I politely pointed out that I don’t keep twelve grand at my house on Sundays.
I re-read the ad several times while deciding what to do. I noticed that in the ad, the car was wearing California plates and had no Massachusetts state-inspection sticker visible on the windshield, so there was no visible evidence that the car was ever registered in Massachusetts. My state has many things going for it, but they are bit of a pain regarding registration of vintage cars. In Mass, every car, no matter how old, must have a title. If a car is purchased from a state where a title is not required for an old car, you must show a previous registration in the name of the seller. If you can’t produce either of those documents, you have a real problem. The fact that this tii was advertised as having a “California pink slip” meant nothing to me, since that struck me as a historical document intended to convey provenance, and may or may not have been a piece of paperwork I could use to title the car in my name.
I recalled several episodes of purchasing cars and having problems titling them due to not having a title or a registration in the name of the actual seller, and having to rely on the good graces of the seller to help me out. With the vibe I got from this seller, I imagined being beholden to him for a paperwork issue, and got the heebie-jeebies. Again, I didn’t know if the car had a title issue or not; I was simply projecting my anxieties and concerns from prior experience.
But adding the fact that my garage and driveway and several off-site storage areas were full of cars, and my bank account was not exactly full of disposable income, I elected to pass.
And then things got interesting.
Someone posted the CL ad to the cars for sale page of bmw2002faq, kicking off a long thread on the car. Then the seller put the car on eBay. Then the eBay listing was picked up on Bring a Trailer, and a string of comments started there. Any window of opportunity I had because I saw the ad early and lived nearby vanished.
I had a number of people contact me, asking me if I could do a pre-purchase inspection on the car. I explained the vibe I had about the car, and said that if I was unwilling to look at it for myself, I was even less likely to do it for someone else.
With the additional exposure and eyeballs came many comments on BaT and 2002faq. Two people posted on 2002faq that they’d seen the car; one reported that “no rust is a tall tale.” Several folks pointed out areas in the photographs that indicated it was unlikely the Agave paint was original. The fellow who had seen the car was certain it had been resprayed, and referred to it as a ten-footer. (Actually, at the risk of being crass, his exact words were “a Hellen Keller paint job.”)
Now, there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with repainting a car, and in my world, there’s even nothing whatsoever wrong with a car being repainted cheaply. It’s more, as I say over and over, that you shouldn’t pay Y for a car that’s only worth X.
The thousands of eyeballs that can be brought to bear on eBay, BaT, and enthusiast forums like 2002faq are a mixed blessing. There can be a tendency for the assembled masses to nitpick, heckling like those two old Muppets from the peanut gallery. Most of this is in good fun, but some of it can get a little strident.
I’m pragmatic about this stuff. Very few cars are either 100% completely original rust-free survivors or 100% “correctly” restored. Most cars have been patched and painted and futzed with. Does this mean that no one should buy them? Of course not; every car has a value. The problem is that, with all the eyeballs on auctions for highly desirable cars like this, they sometimes get bid up past a reasonable value for what they actually are, often by people who confuse them with what they hope that they are.
Of course, if you’re the seller, this isn’t a problem at all.
But then attention was called to the car’s registration tags. Someone pointed out that the small yellow “11” stickers on the car’s California plates were not, in fact, 2011 tags. California registration tags carry the four-digit year (e.g., 2011, not 11) and have the word “California” right above the number. In contrast, the registration stickers on the tii’s license plate simply said 11” I looked at the photos of the tags closely, and realized that they appeared to be Massachusetts tags where the word “Massachusetts” had been cut off. One could infer that there was an attempt to reinforce the car’s California pink-slip provenance by, with these plates and tags, implying the car had been registered in CA in 2011. Interestingly, someone posted on BaT that they ran the car’s California plate number and found that no BMW 2002 ever officially wore it.
Of course, not every eBay bidder is aware of, or reads, the threads on BaT or 2002faq. The ’72 tii reached the somewhat astonishing eBay sale price of $17,560.
But a few days later, the car was back on eBay, with a short explanation about a deadbeat bidder. And this time, the auction had been amended to include a somewhat folksy-sounding admission of a certain amount of rust: “Is there a little bubbling here and there? Sure.” A Photobucket album was added with a few additional images, some showing paint bubbling. There were still no photographs of the underside of the car supporting the claim that it was rust-free.
The second eBay auction ended abruptly after a few days. There was conjecture on 2002faq and BaT as to what had happened.
And then the most surprising thing of all occurred: Someone began posting on both 2002faq and BaT claiming to be a broker who sold the car for the seller, saying that a $15,000 offer came in, and the seller took it. But his posts were confrontational and condescending, perilously close to trolling. He referred to folks who had asked detailed questions about the replaced nose and the non-CA tags on the CA plates “a bunch of whiny yentas.” And rather than answering those questions, he ridiculed the questioners. “You folks belong in a sewing circle,” he said.
One thing he said, though, was right on the money: “I’m sure when it comes time to sell your 2002s you'll be fine with people scrutinizing meaningless minutiae.”
Actually, yes; that is, in fact, how it’s done. When paying that kind of money for a car, it is reasonable to verify its condition and provenance.
I still rue letting that cheap 850i six-speed go, but this one, even with its potential value, I don’t lose a moment of sleep over. Nice to know that my radar still works.
(Next week… back to the E30.)—Rob Siegel
Rob’s book Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic is available through Bentley Publishers, Amazon, and Bavarian Autosport—or you can get a personally inscribed copy through Rob’s website: www.robsiegel.com.
