The quality vs. quantity debate still continues in some areas of my life, but for the most part, it often comes down to bang for the buck when it’s time for me to open my wallet. Some household items that are cheap and cheerful, as they say, can fulfill the same purpose as an expensive item made with care and superior materials. For example, I don’t need a state-of-the-art coffee maker that would outlast my time left on this planet.
I think I’d rather have a good-enough, relatively inexpensive coffee pot that, well, brews coffee. If it breaks in a couple of years, I can just get something just as usable but different, for a little variety. (For the record, my Black & Decker coffee maker is still going strong after close to five years.) While I’m willing to spend a bit more on a few clothing staples, I try to strike a balance between what I’m paying and what I’m getting. I don’t need to pay for a label or the highest quality materials if the button-down shirt I buy is comfortable, looks and fits right, and is easy to launder.
I would have been a preteen when this black BMW was new, in that ’80s era when preppy and the appearance of affluence drove many popular trends. It would have been around ’86 when I had started inching away from simply accepting as fact what others expressed was good. “Why?” had again become a powerful word in my vocabulary, even if I didn’t ask it with the frequency and tenacity of my early childhood. I knew certain things were supposed to be cool, but I wanted to be able to at least understand the reasons even if I didn’t agree.
To use one example, I wasn’t quite sold on the idea that paying a large chunk of money on a polo shirt from a retailer like, say, J. Crew, that was finely-stitched and of quality fabric but otherwise nondescript was something anyone needed to be doing. Granted, my background couldn’t have been further from even the illusion of blueblood preppy-dom, but at the time and for my money, I would have wanted to wear something with more obvious pizzazz for a lot less money. Who wants a shirt to last forever if it looks like something someone’s uncle would wear? Pass. (Where’s the Chess King in this mall?)
A 1986 print ad for the higher-spec 325es.
In my mind, BMW, and particularly the 3-Series, was synonymous with preppy and yuppie culture. Young, upwardly mobile urban professional import drivers were a foreign species in my GM factory town of Flint, Michigan, but the image of such people saturated popular culture in advertisements, TV shows, and movies of the time. With a base price of $22,650 ($66,000 in 2024; a new 2025 3-Series starts at $45,500), the ’86 325e cost about twice as much as the Acura Integra, another compact sport sedan from Honda’s then-new, upmarket brand.
This starting price was also about double the cost of the GL trim level of Ford’s acclaimed, new Taurus midsize sedan, which was also powered by a V6. I doubt that many buyers cross-shopped a 3-Series with the Taurus, but I guess my point is that it seems one really had to be committed to the BMW brand to want to pay that much more for that kind of quality in a Chevy Cavalier-sized car.
This one has a fuel-injected, 2.7 liter inline six cylinder engine with 121 horsepower and 170 pound-feet of torque. When new, it propelled this 2,500 pound car to sixty miles per hour in about ten seconds. This particular example also has a four-speed automatic, so I’m not sure if those ten-second figures I found online were for cars equipped with the five-speed manual or if the real-life difference based on choice of transmission would be significant. These E30s may not have spoken much to me as an adolescent, but what stopped me in my tracks early on this Sunday morning was just how clean and genuinely attractive its styling looks in 2024. What had once appeared to be an utterly anodyne and unmemorable shape to me when new has now worn extremely well almost forty years later, like a classically cut and tailored jacket from a quality clothier.
Some other, more trendy automotive looks from that era do not look nearly as good today. This generation of 3-Series has proven to have enduring style. Is that how it works? Does expensive and boring morph into genuinely interesting if given enough time? I’ve never questioned that these cars are dead-reliable as well as solid, dynamic performers, as would be anything with the BMW propeller emblem affixed to it. It’s just that in this era of visual extremes, I’ve realized that a simple, preppy, aspirational, quality appearance speaks more to me now in this stage of my life than it ever has.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, October 20, 2024.
This particular example is more for the Emperor who lets fawners dictate his fashion choice, or does until such time, in this case, that he tries to out-do a Taurus from a stoplight, when he is left feeling thoroughly exposed.
That is, it’s from BM’s weird low-rev “e” era, and not remotely fast for such a preppy suit. As an auto, I’d recall a time to 60 of about 12 secs – woeful for an exxy German with a name for sports. The owner when new – a person most unlikely to be of any interest to me then or now – could, I suppose, like motoring in their imitation of an image, whilst all and sundry overtook them, though I guess too, in such yuppy times, that that was pretty much the point.
One BMW-driver feature that’s unchanged over time since ’86 seems evident in that right-hand door, for if that’s not a really pissed-off fellow commuter’s foot-mark in the panel, I’ll eat my (cheap-but-perfectly-useful) hat.
Oooh, I was “that guy” in 1984-85. That guy who was an up-and-coming yuppie (or at least thought he was). And I really, really wanted one of these in 1985. But even as a new law school graduate I could not handle that window sticker. But oh boy, that silky smooth inline six, a manual transmission and that stiff, conservatively styled body was the total package in my view.
But for perspective, I remember the 325 as running about $20k in 1985. I could have settled for the 4 cylinder 318, which stickered for about $16k. But that was when my inner midwesterner kicked in and I realized that in terms of performance, I could save another $4k and get the VW Golf GTI. Which also hit 60 mph in around 10 seconds. So as much as I wanted one of these (and I mean WANTED!), I went full Joe Dennis and bought the VW.
I will confess that even all these years later, I still get a little cardiac pitter patter when I see one of these.
Joe, I suspect this BMW and your terrific approach to it will elicit all manner of varied opinions. This is healthy. Mine are somewhere between that of Messrs. JPC and Baum. I’m rather indifferent about this BMW, and most of them in general, thinking to each their own. They simply are not me.
Growing up in a very rural area, where the closest BMW dealer was over 100 miles away, these were not seen often. And, generally, a BMW did not prompt much statement other than people questioning why somebody would spend that much on that small of a car. Has that influenced my current thought process? Perhaps; perhaps not.
That said, a high school friend who still lives in that area has an early 2000s BMW wagon as a secondary car. I can see the appeal.