re: re: Maybe a New //M3 & Thinking of buying an E36 328i:

[jkerouac <jkerouac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

re:  re: Maybe a New //M3 & Thinking of buying an E36 328i:

    How ironic that its a 318ti another digester bought to be budget 
conscious.  I had a 318ti that I bought new.  My first new BMW after 20+ 
used ones. What a thrill only to find the lousy build quality and 
serious production flaws only a few days after the thrill wore off and I 
took a close look at what I had bought.
    BMW ordered the recalcitrant and dealer to buy it back after their 
technical inspectors agreed with my assessment of the car's problems, 
and that the dealer and a BMWNA zone rep had lied during the purchase 
process and in trying to cover up the problems rather than making proper 
repairs.  The dealership also applied financial pressure to a BMWCCA 
chapter to try to cover up their crookedness.  To quote one local club 
officer at that time, "we lost our sponsorship, we did what we had to do 
to get it back."  No mention of the truth of hidden realities.
    So I found a second 318ti at a different sort of dealer, one that 
let me take measurements of ride heights, and thoroughly test drive with 
a salesperson of greater conscious and hipness than previously seen from 
a car salesperson.  Ya know what?  The second 318ti developed other 
problems, some which BMWNA tried to insist were normal behavior for the 
car.  One was that the second car came from the factory with less than 2 
degrees of caster, and a resultant standing oscillation transmitted to 
the steering wheel by the front end.  Since I had just turned in one Ti, 
and had the measurements BMWNA made of the first car using the official 
factory procedures, I knew that this was not normal.  Turns out I was 
hitting on a sacred cow here becuase BMW knew some E36 were coming off 
the line with insufficient caster and that the problem could not be 
fixed at an acceptable warranty cost.
    In the duration of dealing with these problems,  that first dealer 
subsequently resold the buyback car as a new vehicle to an unsuspecting 
buyer who was told it was a new never titled car, only driven by dealer 
employees, never telling them of the car's true service history.  As 
tends to happen when I'm screwed over by others, if I let the universe 
do its thing, reality gets a chance to set in over those who would 
perpetrate to my harm reasonable sounding lies in the name of the truth.
     There were only 100 black US 318ti Club Sport imported.   So 
imagine the coincidence it was, or was not, to pull into as parking lot 
in a public park and find two other black 318ti Club Sport parked in the 
same lot already.  A serial number check
verified I had found the buyback car.  the Twilight Zone?  I kid you 
not.  Then hiking the park trails, we met up with the owner of that car. 
They were shocked to know what the car had been through.  So we drove 
each others' cars, shared paperwork, and wrote up what we found.  The 
test drives verified that their Ti did not have the front end problems 
mine did, and I provided them a copy of the original sales paperwork and 
service documents proving they had been resold a lemon with a key 
manufacturing error still not corrected.
    When the dealer was confronted on this, the salesperson then had 
the lack of common sense to record into their answering machine that 
they were sold a new car, and the sales manager attempted with his best 
shark jawed closers techniques to insist to them the same.  Can you hear 
the Dragnet theme coming down hard on them here?  The salesperson, sales 
manager, and service manager found themselves unemployed.
    The dealer incurred significant expense settling up with the people 
who had been defrauded.  
While BMWNA was accomodating in trying to deal with the problems on my 
Ti, eventually settling up at point where I broke even, at least 
financially.  But the powers that be in BMWCCA refused to act on  this 
later information.
    So after these nightmares and material harm of trying to go cheap 
with bottom of the line, that's when I realized, "hey I could have 
bought an //M3".  Because it wasn't just service and quality issues, it 
was being subjected to just how far on the dark side some people in 
BMWCCA will play and how far they will go to perpetuate reasonable 
sounding lies over less realistic sounding truths.
    Minimalism once seemed like a good idea wrt buying a new BMW to me, 
just as to the responder below.  But when it comes to buying a new BMW, 
you don't get what you don't pay for, while with the //M3, I got what I 
payed for, hoped for, with no regrets.
    For doubts about my posting, please refer to the byline of another 
subscriber:"The truth is the truth, no matter what you *believe*".
Fwiw,

'jk


/Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 08:55:23 -0400
From: "Martin Stanczak" <martin@domain.elided>
Subject: re: Maybe a New //M3 & Thinking of buying an E36 328is

< you'll keep reminding yourself "I
< should have bought an //M3".

Every time I look at my bank statements I remind myself "what a wonderful
thing I did not buy an //M3."
However, I am a minimalist...
To each his own. Good thing almost anyone can get a BMW to suit his/her
automotive budget.

P.S. Yesterday I was driving a bone-stock '03 Impreza WRX and was not overly
impressed with it, which totally enraged the person in posession of the car
(my brother). Low and mid-range torque felt weak, understeer is horrid,
gearbox feels clunky - I told him: overall, even with an 89hp deficit, I
think my car is more fun to drive. He proceeded to try to prove me wrong
which resulted in stinking-up the whole neighbourhood with his clutch... and
I did not change my mind. He blamed it on the tires, which admittedly are
the worst I have ever experienced on a new car, the heat-soaked intercooler,
etc. I told him that's not what I expected out of a $40k car (Canadian $).
Martin
'95 318ti/
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