Caradise Project Car: SOLD! Just how much money I burned at the pyre?

Our first project car has finally sold. I will break a cardinal rule of project cars, which is, NEVER tally up your expenses. I’ve lived by this rule for decades, but I’ll open my Kimono this time for all’y’all

I thought I had a decent chance to make some money. When I found the car, it was at a Joyride auction, and the 1986 BMW 325e checked all the boxes: Manual, Coupe, Six cylinders, clean title, and a somewhat in demand classic car for the eventual sale. The Carfax showed a bit of a ‘barn find’ that hadn’t moved in the last 10 years. It was a worthy gamble at $1,350. I gave myself the mission to restore and take the car to a Sonoma Raceway track date in 7 weeks after purchase.

However despite being able to add a battery and crank the engine when car arrived, found out that the oil pan needed replacement. It was cracked and hanging for dear life. The paint had faded, and the interior was tired everywhere. It definitely needed some love, wheels and tires

The wheels and tire combo turned out to be a circus, car came with a total of 14 wheels, none was a set, and dry rotted tires. Found decent wheels with decent, if old, tires. I also had an idea of taking the car to the track, so my dumbass got ahead of myself and found some track wheels and tires…that didn’t fit. That’s how we ended up with 14 wheels.

After that, I went to work, doing a tune up, doing front and rear brakes, found a used propeller shaft that fit, sprucing up the interior with a full leather decent looking set (after some refurb sessions) so after many Junkyard visits later, I had what it needed. Cheap ebay, craigslist and junkyard parts were used. However, Car would not pass smog so, I had to put a whole new rear exhaust and muffler, because the one it had was rotten and I couldn’t find a used replacement.

It’s first outing at Autocross in Sonoma Raceway was a success, even if the car was the slowest out there (bad configuration with lots of curves and no long straights didn’t help) but mission accomplished!

The E30 project car also went through some misadventures, it got towed for lack of registration the one day I didn’t work from home and without warning.  I had to rescue it. I also had to get the shop to help me post-tune up, where I messed up one spark plug (not torqued all the way) so that made me fail smog again. But after the fix, it finally ran beautifully and passed Smog

Tried then after that, to sell it at Cars and Bids, even with paying a decent photographer, I got turned down. Ebay was even worse. The paint looked rough, I get it. But the car was clean, with a great interior and running very well. I considered re-painting it, but the expense would have been another $2,500-$3,000 and I wasn’t sure I could make that money back. So decided to sell as-is and go into the hellhole that is Facebook Marketplace.

Finally, I listed in CL and Facebook marketplace nearly FOUR months ago, we started the price at $7,500 (hoping to get $6K), then slowly lowered to $6,000 to get $5,000… and because as usual, I got ahead of myself and found the NEXT Caradise Project Car, and I bought it, I couldn’t wait that long to get my price. I had to deal with all the flakes and brain-dead people. I even deciphered the used car sale axioms. Eventually, it sold this week (cue sad trombone)

So, how much did I spend, and lose? Assuming some very lax math, ignoring registration costs and the cost of my own errors and misfortunes, the $45 I spent ‘boosting’ the ad, to get some more brain dead lowballers to text ‘$3K OK?’ and with the hope some parts I have can be sold, this is where I landed:

The Car Itself: $1,350

Fixes at the shop: $2,060 (Oil Pan, New rear exhaust + Muffler, Drive Shaft install)

Parts I installed and Wheels: $1,230 (too many to list)

Interior Refurb: $640 (whole set of leather seats and console, dashboard cap, steering wheel)

Total: $5,280

The friends we made along the way, the blog content and the feeling of satisfaction: Priceless

But despite my best intentions I only got $4,000 – The flakes and lowballs eventually wear you down for sure. The ‘better offers’ I got never showed up. I could’ve held firm at around $5,000, but at that rate, car would have sold in another six months, and my sanity would’ve been lost. We decided to cut our losses and sell.

But we will announce our NEW project car shortly. nearly 10x the initial cost of this one, so this time we better nail it, although this one has sentimental value, so I am not planning on an immediate post-project sale. Lesson Learned. We declare “Project Zoolander” a success.

Join us soon for the next chapter and new Caradise Project Car: AKA “Project Gwen”