This new obsession didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s been building ever since I sold my 2nd Golf R on May 14th, 2022. I had just gotten married, I had bought a truck one year prior for hauling motorcycles around and I was about 6 months away from moving to Charlotte NC where I knew it would be necessary to trim down the amount of toys we had to make that move possible. The Golf R had unnecessarily been aged by our lack of a garage, being a daily driver all winter and I vowed to Heather and myself that I’d wait to have a place to store a car out of UV light and I would be buying a sporty car that was not going to be driven in the rain or in the Winter. The Golf R had already been abused and needed to be replaced with a something more collectible. So at still high levels of COVID car-boom, I sold a car I paid $38,500 for in 2015 to someone in Virginia for $33,500. It went to an enthusiast but also someone who was going to drive it daily. I look at his CarFax data every 6 months and he still owns it and still daily drives it. I’m glad it’s been a reliable car for him. I sold at a good time as these models are now sitting around $25,000 and still depreciating for now.
The sale of the Golf R also came at a time where I was getting my speed fix from motorcycles so the truck was bought to carry bikes that went faster than my Golf R and we were about to move into a rental in NC and I’m so glad we downsized by selling the Ford Escape, Hyundai Ioniq, BMW R18 and Golf R because insurance rates in NC were atrocious. Not an exaggeration that insurance was 3-4X higher in Charlotte than central New Hampshire. We were paying $2,000 a year for 5 cars and 4 bikes in NH. In NC, 2 cars and 2 bikes was $2400 a year with the same coverage.
Back in New Hampshire and with a garage being built, it’s time to fulfill my dreams of preserving a future or current classic. I have had my eyes set on the BMW Z4 M40i for 2 years. It gained a manual transmission in 2025 and will go out of production in March of 2026 and won’t be replaced. I was also cross-shopping the Porsche 718 GTS 4.0 in a manual transmission but you can’t just go buy one of these…you’re allocated one so that’s out and the wait list exceeds the amount they’ll build before they kill it off in October. The Z4 M40i was the last BMW with a manual transmission, non-electric, rear wheel drive roadster they offered and had the added benefit of not being screen-heavy like modern BMWs. It also comes equipped with an insanely reliable B58 motor and has the benefit of not being a full M-Car therefore very livable on your back on normal roads that aren’t groomed race tracks.
This post is not about me buying a Z4. I’ll get one one day but priorities have shifted with an 18 month old at home.
In the state of New Hampshire, Vermont and many other states, a child cannot sit in a 2-seater convertible even if the airbag is disabled until they’re 30 pounds and even then, it’s highly recommended by experts that they be much larger and taller. Matilda is 28 pounds. I don’t just want a fun sporty car for me but I want one for her as well. She’s about 12 years away from being able to ride on the back of mine or heather’s motorcycles and a similar age for sitting in a side-car. So we don’t have a fun way to transport her around. Two seaters are also out for safety reasons. This narrowed me down to convertibles that seat 4 but I still wanted something for enthusiasts that I would enjoy that also would not depreciate much.
While I had been saving up to purchase a $74,000 BMW Z4 M40i, we’re remodeling our house soon and I don’t have a lot of clarity to how much my mortgage will be after that work is done. It’ll be our only debt because we are good with money but it’s $1600 a month now and could be $4,000 after we’re done so not only is the Z4 an incompatible 4-seater, at $1300 a month at 5.5% interest, I didn’t want to sign up for that payment being less than one year in my new job and an unknown future mortgage payment.
Let’s recap on what we want:
- Convertible
- Manual transmission
- No depreciation
- Enthusiast but not race / track car that broke your back
- Great condition
- Under $20,000 USD (cash I have allocated toward the purchase)
- 4-seater
- Not winter driven
- Low-Miles
- Well maintained and fully OEM (not modified or chopped up by an amateur boy-racer)
Because I do eventually intend to sell the car to get a used Z4 M40i once Matilda is old enough to ride in the passenger seat so I want a car I can keep stock and maintain current value.
I can tell you how difficult this journey has been because there are a lot of used convertibles out there. Some of them have manuals but the ones that are in mint condition and low miles owned by 1-2 different adults and kept in a garage for summer driving is…difficult. There’s always some compromise to be made.
However, I finally found one after about 1 year of casually searching and 6 weeks of seriously searching for 2-3 hours every night. I’ll note too that without a Facebook account, this is way harder. Every private car sale is now posted to Facebook Marketplace and without a Facebook account, that database of listings is completely unavailable to me. My wife even messaged a person on Facebook who posted his car for sale on a BMW marketplace but with “contact me on Facebook marketplace” as the instruction which is frustrating because why post to a BMW forum if you just want people to use Facebook? Sigh.
Let’s note that I narrowed it down to a handful of models that fit my requirements:
- BMW 330Ci Convertible (E46, 2001–2006)
- BMW 128i Convertible (E88, 2008–2013)
- BMW 135i Convertible (E88, 2008–2013)
- BMW 325Ci Convertible (E46, 2001–2006)
- Saab 9-3 Aero Convertible (2004–2011)
- Audi A4 Cabriolet (2003–2008; 1.8T/3.0)
- Mini Cooper S Convertible (2005–2008 R52; 2016+ F57)
- Chevrolet Camaro Convertible (2011–2015)
- Toyota Solara Convertible (2004, V6 manual)
- Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder (2001–2005)
- Pontiac G6 Convertible (2006–2009, manual rare)
- Chrysler Sebring Convertible (2000s, manual rare)
I wanted to include the M3, M4, some of the Mercedes SLK/SLS variants but these are firmer sporty suspension models that are less family-oriented / touring / GT and more race-derived in the ride quality and also, ones with low miles commanded a higher cost ($25K+) as well as being more expensive to maintain with V8 motors and significant premium price for engine components.
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I almost just gave up and bought a low mile BMW Z3 M Roadster (one in NH, one in VA and one in NY were on my list of people I was speaking to) but I continued to remind myself that Matilda would have to love looking at the car but be unable to actually go for a ride with me. I’d be in it by myself unless we found a babysitter to come over and then, we’d rather just ride our motorcycles (heather rides, too). So what would a 2-seater do for us? It’d sit there until Matilda was closer to 10 years old or unless we had a babysitter. I grappled with giving up my 2-seater dreams for weeks but the timing just isn’t right with an 18 month at home and dreams of going on adventures with her in a convertible.
With the above list, I did want a European car so Mini Cooper, Saab and the BMW models were top of my list. ChatGPT was very helpful over the last few months. Here’s a nice view of these by power to weight and 0-60 times:
So I had settled on the 128i and 330Ci because I wanted to get a naturally aspirated model for the most pure experience. I also felt these were at nearly the bottom of depreciation and if I maintained them fully OEM with a trusted mechanic that I could keep these on the road for a while and even make some money later when I went to sell.
Finding these unmodified was really challenging. You could pay top dollar or just wait patiently.
Then I found one but that’s for another post.
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