1984 BMW 318i Story
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| 1988 photo of the 318i |
This is the story of one 1984 BMW 318i automatic. This story starts in 1988 when my father-in-law bought my mother-in-law (Joyce) this 1984 BMW 318i from a used car dealer in Kennewick Washington. They owned this car for many years. They moved to Las Vegas to retire and the car came with them. Several years after my father-in-law retired, they realized they never drove this car anymore. They did not want to hassle of selling it so they gave it to us instead. I flew out to Vegas and drove the car back to Peoria in the summer of 2000.
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| In my garage in Chillicothe, IL |
The late 70's and early 80's was dismal for the auto industry. Cars were really low on power, performance, reliability, well just about everything. This 318i was the most anemic version available in the US. It had a 1.8L 4 cylinder engine mated to a crude 3-speed automatic. The engine only made 100hp but it was confined to a rather narrow rpm range that started around 4,000rpm. Below that, the power was real weak. The automatic transmission made it hard to use that tight powerband too. 0-60mph came in 12 seconds at best.
At this point I will refer to this writeup of all the modifications I made to this car: http://jimroal.com/cars/bmw.htm . When I sold it, I has turbocharged and intercooled it and converted it to a 5-speed manual transmission. It now accelerated to 60 in 6 seconds.
I hit a deer one evening and the car was totaled according to the insurance company. At this point the value of the car was low so even the minor damage it had was enough to total it.
The car was drivable and I drove it home. The damage was sheet metal level but I decided to sell the car versus repairing it. I sold it to a coworker, Dan. Dan repaired the car and drove it for a few years. A head gasket blew while he owned it but I had included a spare engine when I sold him the car. He swapped the engine and returned it to stock (no turbo). He later sold the car to another coworker, Cort. Cort installed a Megasquirt EFI system with distributorless ignition. He later sold the car to another coworker, Ethan. Dan, Cort, Ethan, and I all worked in the same department and the same building. This car stayed "in the family" for many years. Ethan put the turbo back on. He found some leaks in the header I had made so I repaired them under warranty. This was around 2011 now.
Ethan eventually sold the car to Sam. Sam was into drift competition and he did a major rebuild on the car, installing a roll cage and an inline 6 engine. Here is a short article about Sam's car: https://s3mag.com/sam-holzmanns-e30-bmw/
