I was at school as the Twin Towers fell. It was morning and I was a Freshman in high school. The world stopped. A few months earlier, a person in Indianapolis Indiana walks into a BMW dealership and orders a convertible. They decided to lease the vehicle but it was special order. In fact, it was so special that between 75-150 of this spec were ever built and most are now in junkyards or scrap heaps. September 9th, 2022 just after the model year production stopped, one of the final examples of this spec entered port in Newark NJ and by November 28th, the car was leased to this unknown person. They loved the car so much that after putting just 8,000 miles on it in 3 years purchased it from the leasing company in 2005. The stock market was booming, real estate was on the rise and they bought out their leased BMW convertible for continued enjoyment.
February 3rd, 2011, I was living in New Hampshire having just moved there from San Francisco in September of 2010 and learning how to ski and settling in to life in the woods. According to my iCloud Photos, I baked a pizza from scratch and was drinking a California Cabernet with my girlfriend. At the same time, this Indianapolis based original owner listed their BMW convertible for sale with 24,219 miles on the odometer. they had owned it for 9 years and put 3600 miles a year on it.
Four days later, February 7th, a man named Malcom Applegate who was the publisher for the Indianapolis Star purchased the vehicle for he and his wife to enjoy on sunny days when it wasn’t raining. The convertible went into their garage and was maintained by a BMW Dealer every year and kept in immaculate shape. Malcom would pass away 8 years later after suffering from dementia and his wife who is still alive loved her rides in the convertible. Malcom put just 2700 miles on the vehicle from 2011-2017 when he sold it to the 3rd owner who happened to be his friend and neighbor. While the car received annual care from BMW and professional detailing, it was just a romantic weekend car for Malcom and his wife and while I didn’t speak to his widow directly, I hear she was happy the car was going to a new home and she misses the drives she’d take with her husband in it.
In 2017 on June 10th, Randy (last name redacted) purchased the car from Malcom who, I hear, begged him to buy the car. Malcom’s health wasn’t well and he wanted Randy to buy his car. It was Randy’s wife who saw the Steel Blue Metallic (Staul Bleu) with blue soft top as special ordered by a generous soul in 2001 who convinced Randy to buy it. She loved how the car looked and was thrilled with the idea of owning a convertible. The couple was reaching retirement and it’d be a great way to take weekend trips together in Indianapolis where they spent their Summers. They wintered in Florida but they never took the car to Florida. It was a vehicle that both Randy and Malcom never drove when the forecast called for rain and never during the winter months. The car would live on a battery tender all Winter and only see UV light on days when the top was down.
In fact, the windshield wipers were dry-rotted and needed to be replaced because “we’ve never driven it in the rain and the wipers were never used” according to Randy. Randy’s wife said they always put the top down before leaving the house and never ran it with the top up because they’d never drive the convertible if it the weather required the top being up. They had other cars.
From its build date in mid-2002 to June of 2025 when I purchased it (23 years), this convertible has been driven 32,348 miles or 1,406 per year.
I love a good story and I’m so happy to have this blog to document the story here for posterity. The VIN number is WBABS53492EV90037 in case anyone in the future googles it and wants to know the history.
——
BMW’s E46 Generation 3-series lasted until 2006. Everything on model details and changes is online so I won’t bore you with all of that but for this car, it’s a pre-facelift E46 convertible which is preferred by the BMW purists whereas I’m sitting here wishing it was a 6-speed instead of a 5-speed. It is a 330 CI trim so it has BMW’s most powerful 3-series inline 6 motor available in that era unless you pit it against the E46 M3 which was significantly more powerful with the caveat that the M3 was heavier, had harder and more stiff suspension and was very “scary” from a break-traction-and-kill-you perspective as well as being significantly more expensive to own. If you want the last BMW 3-series convertible in a manual that is naturally aspirated without any screens and direct steering, you can pick an M3 and pay out the nose (then or now) with insanely high maintenance costs or you can get the touring model and having 100 horsepower less but a plusher ride and cheaper parts by picking up a 330.
I spent months searching for a convertible and after deciding I needed 4-seats, I started with Mini Cooper S and 1st generation (after BMW bought them which was 2005-2008) that was maintained and low miles were about $10-$15K but they were quite cramped. Actually, very cramped. Then there’s the Saab Aero V6 Turbo cars which go for $15-$20K in immaculate low-miles condition but I find how these look to be rather ugly despite more power to weight than the Mini Cooper or the 330 CI. This was pretty much it for options as far as I saw it. The 3-series can be broken down into 318, 320, 325 and 330 trims each having more powerful motors and more features. The M3 looks similar but it’s an investment up front and over time and would have been quite a harsh ride for a baby and I’d always be worried about hurting its value just by looking at it. It’s best kept in a museum, not in my garage.
The thing is, the 330 CI is quite amazing. From 2000-2006 if you ignore the facelift and 6-speed along with some body work, the early models were really well appointed technically. The 2002 330 CI has heated seats, ABS, traction control, power convertible top, power windows, power locks, rain sensing wipers, automatic headlights, security system, a key fob that opens the trunk and unlocks the doors, Bi-Xenon headlights and a very intelligent engine management system. It’s cutting edge technology for the era.
Subsequent generations gained forced induction motors (turbochargers) and screens and assisted steering and parking / lane keep features and so among collectors and purists, the E46 3-series is the last BMW with a naturally aspirated inline 6 with every technological comfort feature without any features that are “dated” like the ABS on this is amazing without having an automatic cruise control or built in navigation or auto-steering or any thing that is “nice” 20 years ago but “bleh” in 2025. It’s a classic BMW that has a lot of things just rolling out to lesser brands without any fluff or features that take away from the driving experience. I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.
After I decided to pickup a 330 CI, the challenge became clear. I’ve long thought about “4th owner cars” which is the 1st owner does nothing to the car. The second owner may replace the wheels and the 3rd owner does some tuning and suspension but the 4th owner ruins it. They drop the car to the ground, tint the windows themselves, add a bunch of stickers and add a lot of parts they found on eBay and basically ruin it. Fourth owner also means 150,000+ miles and completely unknown service history meaning you’re inheriting lazy maintenance and hoping that a $75 air box from eBay will not grenade your engine during the test drive. Once a car is 20 years old, you have a lot of options out there all from various price ranges but (as I learned), a used car lot in Jersey that picked up a 2004 M3 and a 2005 Mini Cooper S at auction have no idea what the history is and don’t care. They are happy to talk to you about their buy-here, pay-here financing at (no joke) 11% interest rate.
If you search AutoTrader or Cars.com for BMW 330 Ci convertibles, the vast majority of the examples have 150,000-200,000 miles and are silver or black and often not on OEM wheels (red flag). I spent weeks trying to find some unicorn of an example and 2 sources popped up that I found helpful.
First Bring A Trailer is helpful. I think the prices are inflated there but also, you get what you pay for. Examples of the car I wanted to buy were going for $19,000-$23,000. I had budgeted $15,000 to purchase a car and was ready to accept my fate that I’d need to spend $3,000 just going through the car I bought for $15K in order to get something reliable. Bring A Trailer is good to check yourself but probably not where you should buy if you’re patient.
Second, Craigslist. Typically, older people own these cars that don’t know what they’re worth so while Facebook Marketplace has a lot of kids selling their broken E46 project cars for “I know what I got” prices, Craigslist (if you sort by private owner) will be people who have a family convertible that just want to sell it for 1/8 what they paid (this car listed for $40-$45K new) and for a good price because it’s been sitting in the barn for 10 years.
I was lucky to find a Cars.com listing for when I searched BMW 330 CI and sorted lowest mileage, this was the 2nd lowest mileage example in the country. First goes to a black one in California with 20K miles and they wanted $20K for it but it was a 6-owner car so I started thinking, “lemon?” And besides it was too far away and out of my budget.
I also was occasionally tracking the BMW Car Club of America (CCA) Marketplace which has fantastic prices because it’s member to member sales and mostly no haggling. A man in Boston had a 2006 (facelift) 6-speed BMW 330 Ci Convertible in Silver on Black with 65,000 miles for $12,900. Rick and I spoke a few times and I was going to go check it out before I flew out to Nashville (the flight I’m on now). I called him today to tell him I bought a steel blue on blue with grey interior and he said “that’s an amazing color. you’re a lucky man” so no hard feelings there. The BMC CCA site requires you’re a member so it’s not public facing or searchable but there are some great cars there for respectable prices.
Amazingly, Cars.com is the only place that Randy listed his car for sale. He did put it for a “i know what I got” price of $14,700 which is exactly what CarFax.com says it’s worth and he’s spot on. He listed it nowhere else and included just 5 low-resolution and grainy photos. I’m so glad that he didn’t market the vehicle not because I would have paid more but because it would have sold faster than I could have bought it. The second lowest mile Blue on Blue on Grey 330 in the country for the last 3 months and priced exactly what it’s worth. Randy also indicated it had extra wheels which turned out meaning that it had the original wheels with a 2007 set of tires on it (DOT requires 10 years for tires regardless of mileage be replaced) in an OEM 17” size but M-spec wheels which were a special order in addition to an 18” set of BMW m-Wheels which I believe were on the same-generation M3 car and they look fantastic. I’ll be keeping those on the car and restoring the 17” wheels for a later sale. Nothing else was included except the story I shared with you above.
This car is flawless, striking, sexy(?) and fully loaded. It’s really something to behold. Steel Blue Metallic is a remarkable color. Note that I prefer richer and louder colors. I’d prefer Miami Blue (a Porsche color) but BMW wants old people to buy timeless/stylish cars and this is exactly that. It’s a 15% navy blue saturation to an overall metallic slate grey color and it works just fine. It’s not loud but it is attractive. There’s no rust and every single part is original except all of the fluids which were change in 2023 and the Continental Extreme Contact tires on the 18” M3 wheels which were installed in 2017 and my mechanic says are fine until 2027 when, at 10 years, he requires they be replaced to pass inspection.
Randy and I exchanged a dozen phone calls, video calls and text message for 2 weeks. I then committed to buy it and made plans to pick it up.
——
I left New Hampshire at 3PM in my EcoDiesel RAM. I drove across Vermont over to Albany NY and west on I-90 to Eerie PA before cutting south toward Indianapolis. I stopped at 1AM for a 3-hour nap and woke up at 4AM to continue on to my final destination. Randy and I were going to meet at a bank but he insisted I test-drive the car first. Great idea. We looked over everything, I performed a test-drive and everything lined up to our hours of conversations. At one point, Randy activated the convertible top and a small gust of wind dropped 10 drops of rain down onto the soft top and randy said “nope, not good” as he’s insisted on never having it see rain just like Malcom did before him. We agreed to do the transaction at his house so I brought out my $14,700 in cash (a scary thing to travel with) and my bill of sale drafted up and we did all of the paperwork in his garage.
Randy told me he may need some tissues and I told him that if my truck doesn’t start once the car is loaded up, I’ll cancel the sale because god spoke and it’s just not meant to be. He appreciated the gesture. It really was a bitter sweet goodbye. We spent about 2 hours in total loading up the car on my U-Haul trailer. In the moment, Randy and I felt deeply about the condition of this car. We both wanted the car to be in perfect shape for its journey to the new home. We fussed over the break-over angle on the trailer, clearance of the ropes and he even brought out a scissor jack to lift the car up so we could open the door to get in and out of it after it was on the trailer. The whole thing was fun because I, now the owner, was working hand in hand with the previous owner who loved this car to make sure nothing bad happened to it.
Spoiler, the car was too low for the trailer and I damaged the inner wheel well plastic liners on the journey home but the day I arrived home, I had my BMW body shop look at the damage and for $200 (parts & labor), they’re replacing them and all of the clips and screws so this damage never happened. I texted Randy and he was happy to hear that. :)
Around noon in Indianapolis, Randy and his wife looked on and waved as I pulled away. the 330’s car alarm went off so I had to stop and deactivate it then I was off for the 950 mile drive home, this time with 4,000 pounds of car and trailer behind me which saw my RAM’s fuel economy drop from 27 MPG on the way there to 21 MPG on the way home which I think is quite impressive.
By midnight, I was in central NY and starting to hallucinate a bit so I booked a marriot hotel for the night and the moment I parked my truck, I got an email that they cancelled my reservation since they were sold out (don’t worry, I’ll call Marriot and get some apology points since I’m a platinum member) so for the 2nd night in a row, I got some sleep in the back of my truck. 6AM, I woke up, got some coffee and continued heading home.
I rolled into my house at 10:30AM and wasted no time:
- New battery and windshield wipers at AutoZone
- Quote and schedule to replace the wheel well liners at my BMW body shop
- Town hall to register the car and order my vanity plate (BLU PRL if you’re curious)
- Schedule after analysis with my BMW mechanic to do a complete front to back post-purchase-inspection and replace all fluids and filters on the car along with extensive check on all suspension and bushings components because I think the car needs an alignment, rear springs and poly-bushings all around but I’ll let him do that check
- Quick lunch with heather because I won’t see her for 2 weeks
- Schedule and drop off the car with my detailer who will fix 1000 miles of dirt and grime from the drive home (1900 miles total over 40 hours)
I have scheduled but need to go down to Hookset NH because my OptiCoat detailer will be doing a full paint correction and ceramic coating on the entire vehicle but this won’t take place until July.
By 3PM, I had left my house and headed down to Boston to hop on a flight to Nashville for a BMW motorcycle rally.
I can now safely turn off all of the alerts for new listings for convertibles that fit my very specific list of requirements and instead work to make the car perfect through maintenance and small things like getting a car seat for Matilda and of course, a seat protector to keep Cheerios from damaging the leather and stitching.
I am hoping to talk more about this car later and once all of the work to get it restored to my preferences is done but it’s already a perfect car and appears to need nothing but I still have my preferences of requiring a new to me car has all new fluids, detailing and mechanic look-over. I’ll share those updates here along with some much better photos since I literally have only had it off the trailer for 2 hours before I had to hop on a flight to Nashville.
You must be logged in to post a comment.