Sweet baby Canadian Jesus. Comprehensive insurance on my ‘81 BMW R65 runs me a total of $230 for a year. And comprehensive on my ‘87 635csi is a grand total of $600.

1st Gear: New Camaro With 76 Percent More Bitchin’

I did it wrong compared to most people. BMW airhead!

Grammatically speaking, yup! Or “Karmann oxide-enhanced-bodied E9” might be better.

I remember a few years ago reading about someone who bought a cosmetically decent E9, only for the windshield to pop out during braking due to the horrid cowl rust that lurked beneath good paint.

Karmann really only built the basic bodywork - they specialized in coachwork at the time. BMW designed it, contracted Karmann to produce the shell, and then finished off the rest of production in the BMW factory. The same process was used for the early E24s until BMW brought the entire production in-house.

I did too, until I took a deeper look into how badly they rust (even more so than my E24, which is a rust-prone design itself). Now I want to win the lottery very, very, badly so that I can afford a rust-free E9.

If it will give me a start as great as this... I’m sold.

That’s almost exactly how it happens with BMW - if a dealer has allocations available to order from the factory, one can generally get down to $500-750 over invoice on a custom order, with no extra delivery cost. The only downside is (depending on the order time) the 6-12 week wait for it to get delivered from the…