Bought an old BMW M3, filled with regret...

LSB with the cream interior - That (and only that) combo would be acceptable grounds to forgive it not having a manual, otherwise no dice :p

Manual, convertible, red leather and not chavved. That's what I wanted for years, and finally found.
 
Having seen the examples on sale since that post, yeah. But as that post says, it would have to be at a reasonable cost, none of the properly good ones are below 10k.
 
Gaygle said:
http://forums.m3cutters.co.uk/showthread.php?t=142381

Another fallen E46 soldier, slain in the same way yours was :(

The repair was £7000 with BMW using all new parts, BMW approved paint and painting methods, with warranty ETC, and Admiral were willing to go to only £6500? Seriously, was there no negotiation that could happen?! They're only £500 off!! Ask Admiral to increase their offer by £250, and BMW to lower theirs by £250.
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Damn his rear is worse than mine :eek: Also had to wince at the lack of carpets and the crud on the base carpeting :o

The repair was £9400 inc VAT with BMW, they knocked it down to £7000 to try and get a yes from the insurer, but the insurer's number people still said no and to knock off a further £500 before they can say yes. BMW would not budge beyond the £7000 at all which is a shame. Admiral also had major issues with the 3 month lead time on BMW getting an exhaust in stock - That was one major factor in them rejecting the BMW estimate.

Likewise the Admiral assessment people won't offer any more since they have had the independent valuator out and they gave it a valuation of £10,500 which is a bit more than their book value.

My issue now is that due to the time of year, it's impossible to get work on it done in a timely fashion. My car is at mate's bodyshop and they won't be able to finish it until the middle of January at the earliest providing there are no stock issues with parts (Exhaust is currently a question mark as it seems nobody has stock of one new). Admiral want it all done and dusted ASAP, which isn't how I want to play it.

As of this afternoon I've made a decision on what I'm going to do.

I am going to go with Jez's thoughts and accept their latest offer to Cat D the car and me keep it as salvage. I'd be getting £7610 after buying it back. I've also got the Jeep until the 6th January, so the additional money from that is a bonus.

Mate's bodyshop has a brand new KIA as a courtesy car, he said I'm welcome to it whenever I need to during the course of the repair. So I'm covered on a vehicle front for a few weeks at least.

There really is no winner here in this kind of situation other than perhaps the insurer as many have mentioned earlier, but this seems like the most sensible solution as it leaves me with a few grand in my pocket post repair and I can treat myself to some much needed timeout in the form of a European road trip in the summer.

I'm also going to do a few things in the new year I've been planning on doing anyway since I never intended to get rid of the car. At least I can put the past few weeks behind me and get out on the road to enjoy it even more.

  • BMW Performance front BBK upgrade and refurb the OE rear callipers to the same colour.
  • Supersprint Race (not the Lightweight Race version) exhaust upgrade. Only this and the Eisenmann with Sport option keep true to the stock exhaust sound signature while adding some meat without adding drone or muffling out the rasp. The Supersprint tips look the best and the Evolve review of them praised them highly as did other owners. So I am happy to pay the bit extra to get that instead of stock and have the exhaust sorted within weeks instead of months. The SSR weighs about 15KG less than the stock which is 25.4KG!
  • Evolve Eventuri carbon intake. Easy DIY, MAF retained and that induction sound on part throttle and wot :D Many claim it also gives smoother acceleration mid to high revs and gains a few horses in the process. Coupled with the exhaust, it should pull more eagerly than ever.
  • Complete bush refresh with new OE bushes.

And finally before next Winter, get ETA to reinforce the subframe. Mine has no cracks, but being proactive about it and stopping it happening at all is ideal preventative maintenance.

Then that's it, M3 is sorted for the remainder of its life.

Not the outcome some were advising I know, and all ideas were considered (thanks all!) before coming to this decision. But ultimately I really don't want to get rid of this example and go through a year's worth of faff all over again. I know this car too well now to see it scrapped purely based on panel damage repair costs.

TL;DR. Today I accepted the D.
 
No details on Housey's M3 m8 as of yet. I don't think the marker will affect me mentally at all. D is minor and not a cause for concern in most cases. If I was a buyer I'd be wary, I'd want everything documented, I'd want to visit the bodyshop to see what their workshop is like and what they're like etc.

[TW]Fox;28977085 said:
Would they not pay the bill at your mates place, thus avoiding Cat D?

How much is the cost repair going to cost you?

Will £7650 cover the cost of the repair and the depreciation through it's Cat D status?

Seems like you are paying £3k for the salvage, which seems a lot?
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Yes Admiral's savage value has gone up in recent times it seems. It's certainly not 10-20% any more.

I considered the depreciation too, but as the car isn't going anywhere any time soon/at all, I don't think this will matter too much.

Even 7000 will more than cover the repairs being done here. I'm looking at about 4-5k based on his initial giving the car a once over (it's only been with him a day and the shop is now closed for the holiday period). I'll have the exact figure when they open up on the 5th January.

As I walk past the shop twice a day to and from work, he's said I'm welcome to stop by each day and check out the progress and photo document each stage. This might mean nothing to anyone else, but it's peace of mind and at least I'll have documented evidence showing it's all been done to a quality standard.

It needs:
- A new boot lid
- Weather seal
- Rear bumper (this can be used as it's only going to be painted anyway)
- Crash panel 1 for the bumper area and panel 2 repair for the boot floor area
- Some trim bits under the bumper and in the wheel arch area
- Paint process (I will probably pay a bit of extra cash and get them to do the whole car)
- Both passenger side alloys refurbed by local wheel specialist

Cheap bits that I've ordered anyway this afternoon:
- New lip spoiler
- New OEM M3 boot badge
- ///M stickers for the alloys

Once everything is done, I'll contact my insurer and see about getting an agreed value arranged. This should add some security should I get hit again in the future.
 
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You're assuming I'm going to be selling the car. Upgrade in the future will more than likely be a new/AUC car, not a private buy. So will just part ex in. Otherwise I'll just stick to the plan from earlier in the year when I got this, keep it and add an EV in years to come.
 
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[TW]Fox;28977344 said:
You'll part-ex in for thousands of pounds less than if it was a Cat D. It's worthless to any decent dealer as a Cat D, all they can do with it no matter how nice is throw it at the auction house, where for the same reason it will attract very few bids.

I'm not averse to the idea of Cat D at all but the numbers have to make sense.

And with just £7650 to both pay for the repair in full and account for loss of value I don't think the numbers do make sense in this example.

I can't see how a decent bodyshop can do a decent job for a huge amount less than the BMW quote. Main dealer bodyshops are not like main dealer service departments, they work on far leaner margins and often find themselves having to play to the insurers tune in terms of labour rates etc. The rates they'll do for insurers will be very keen and I'm just not sure how anyone else is going to suddenly take thousands off it - they'll be a bit cheaper, sure.

Which means if BMW is £7k your alternative is going to be what, £5.5-£6k at the best case scenario?
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All I can tell you is what BMW confirmed to Admiral and myself, that they were only authorised to lower the price to 7000 and would not budge below that figure, the best they could do was remove the need for the supplied hire car and offer the BMW courtesy car. My place would do it cheaper by default anyway, it just so turns out it's even cheaper because they can give me a good rate. To be honest I should have gone to them back in early December instead of arranging it through BMW. Had I know then the time constraints wouldn't have applied and the car would be nearly finished and back on the drive by now and not cat d.

I'm also pretty sure that Admiral's approved repairer in Portsmouth would have come back with a lower repair figure than BMW too.

Lesson learned.

Will the quality of the workmanship be as good as BMW? I can't answer that this case, but on previous cars I've had work done by them and BMW (Same BMW bodyshop in fact) and to be honest I couldn't tell one result from the other - Both met expectations.
 
LiE said:
Is it not and option to pay £500 out of your own pocket so that BMW can do the repair? I know it's 500 but it could be worth it to avoid cat d and get BMW to do the work.
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Genuinely don't know, a bunch of options were put forward by both BMW and Admiral, but this was not one of them - And it never came to my mind either. But it would essentially be like paying someone £500 to rear end me no? :o

[TW]Fox;28977409 said:
And you'd have honestly been happy with them carrying out the work?
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I have had no dealings with them so have no idea what they are like, so I'd need to build up some knowledge of them first. But that comment was in relation to yours about the BMW price vs the alternative price and why they don't quite make sense.
 
Fox if they needed the insurance work so much then I'm sure they would have knocked off another £500 - All this was discussed with both people I spoke to at BMW and they just would not move from the £7000 figure and Admiral wouldn't work in favour of this either.

I won't have a full quote until the 5th January as they are now closed until then. Because of the time all this has taken with the car being at BMW, the valuator taking a few days to visit and another few days to send over his report to Admiral. It all cut into crucial time.

Peerzy I know it's going to be a much harder car to sell if I ever did sell it for whatever reason. I'm confident enough to say that if one thing does make me want to not have the car then it won't be the repair job but something else entirely.

Everything I've done the past year has been in view of keeping the car for the long run. Circumstances change I agree and anything could happen that might mean I need to sell or change the car. Those things I guess are unavoidable whatever the outcome of all this and you could say an M3 (marked or not) would be the least of my worries f such a thing happened. All I know is that nothing in my mind so far points to me not wanting to keep the car for years and years. That was my goal from the start of this thread and nothing has changed yet.

Edit*

Peerzy said:
Just a thought, buy the car back for £2800 and then break it? That guy on the M3 forum sold just the engine block for £2k, and the other bits set to bring in another £2k-£3k. SO that would give you the remaining money from Admiral (£7800) plus say £5k in breaking bits and a much better budget to replace the car?
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Yup I've got that thread bookmarked and this is a fallback. Whatever happens the value of the parts in breaking alone are still substantial and a Cat D won't change that at all.
 
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That's just the amount for the repair estimate Fox, Admiral also factored in the hire car costs to date. I don't know how much they were paying for the E class for the few days I had that, but the jeep has cost them £466 so far according to Admiral. They also said they warranty any repair work they pay for for 5 years - That was also a factor into their valuation costs.

I don't know how much power they have either but with the above in mind it didn't immediately come to mind as odd unless I'm missing something?
 
To date. BMW won't cover any costs for the insurer, BMW just offered their courtesy car due to the fact that the exhaust not being in stock for 3 months.

So it boils down to this.

1: Car is written off as Cat D and valued at £10500. It has no chassis damage, no axle damage, no alignment damage, no subframe damage. All confirmed by BMW who quoted it as "an easy repair".
2: I buy it back leaving me with £7610.

And either:

3a: I get it repaired to OE standard at my local bodyshop guy using genuine parts, it comes back better than it was before the accident.
or
3b: Break the car for parts which will net considerably more and buy something else.

You guys know how I feel about 3b already.
 
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The car has already left BMW and come back here, so the recovery cost now would be on me. So what's that these days, £150/£200? It's a 40 ish mile trip each way! To be honest this has been a major headache for the past month and as above, I just want my car back and repaired to my satisfaction without all the headache.
 
Seriously a bummed out situation for sure.

Still waiting on Housey's mate's M3 details btw. If it's just right, then the option to break my car would a sound choice.
 
Thanks Housey, got the details too. Any interior pics?

My first E46 was Steel Grey.

It looks like it's been maintained well and has some cool bits (BBK, CSL wheels etc) but too many things turn me off such as SMG coming up to 100k miles, black interior. I'd also have to delete the depo lights, undelete the Rasp delete, delete the Scorpion exhaust, delete the spacers, delete the CSL lid and a few other visible cosmetic stuff - All fairly easy changes of course.

If it had a manual and red leather interior...

Housey said:
They rattle, they wobble, they are just wrong. :D
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The E46 M3 in general rattles and makes noises from various places anyway, like Old Blackie in Californication, I call it "character" :p
 
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So come late Jan, this is what it will return to:

jZGmqil.jpg

Best rear.

[TW]Fox;28978063 said:
Instead of deleting the CSL lid couldnt you just take it off?
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But then it would just be a car with no boot lid :confused:
 
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I now have Collinite 915 to apply when I get the car back in a few weeks.476s lasted as good as a year anyway and 915 is supposed to be even better for dark paint cars leaving the deep wet gloss look better.

AF Triple + 476s or 915 (if dark paint) = Possibly the most ideal long lasting paint protection without spending £lol.
 
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