COOP

What a sweet car...I saw the YouTube piece on it years ago. Clearly done right with no expense spared. I just love how "factory" the installation looks. I would say that 2,200 lbs seems 10% optimistic, especially for a '76 with DynaMat. I wonder if mlytle might weigh in on that (get it?). My '73 M2 has a full cage on the plus side but carbon fiber hood/trunk panels, rear seat delete, lightweight front seats and forged HRE wheels on the minus side. I seem to recall us weighing it awhile back at 2,350 full of gas. But again, just a beautiful, beautiful M2...kudos to the builder and owner. Jay strikes me as such a genuine car guy and overall nice person...you'd never guess he's worth $350M if you met him at a dive bar. COOP

Thank you all...good information, very helpful! I noticed that AC even has this trick "cross beam adapter" which is pretty cool: http://www.pelicanparts.com/BMW/catalog/shopcart/TOOL/POR_TOOL_ACHyd1_pg5.htm COOP

I want to buy a high quality floor jack and this brand (distributed through Pelican Parts) seems to fit the bill. Any experience here, fair FAQers? Thanks! COOP

No problem! We'll alternate weekends...I'm sure that the new owner will be fine with that. COOP

Yes!! So...I get the car for a wine country weekend then?! My guess of $33.5K was based on the assumption (wrong or right) that a comparable tii is currently worth about 50% more than a "standard '02." The Verona '72 tii that sold for $50K last month on BaT had a ton in common with this car (relatively unmolested & excellent condition, great history/documentation, fun '70s color, presented with aftermarket wheels but including original steelies with the sale, etc, etc). Couldn't be better comps in my opinion. $50K is exactly 50% more than $33,250 (ok, give or take $125). I realize that it's not necessarily this simple, but that was how I approached it. COOP

NT

Lol, no problem zinz, glad you enjoyed it! jrhone, Bottas moved over to let Hamilton by on team orders...the pass of the race. I'm a sucker so I'll probably keep watching...Every race, I just keep hoping that "this will be the one" to feature some incredible battle. Watch a Moto3 or Moto2 race sometime, it takes an hour just to wind down afterwards. COOP

That's fine, yes opinions certainly do differ...but please explain specifically what made it an awesome race from your perspective. I've been watching F1, MotoGP and sports cars my whole life and that race (like 90% of F1 races in recent memory) didn't provide anything to get my heart racing. Again, I totally get it if you're happy that your team won, just trying to relate to where your initial comment was coming from. Thanks, COOP

Wait..."Awesome race?!" What race? I saw yet another F1 snooze-fest. No battles, no badass passes, just another excruciating procession and a finishing order decided by penalties, pit strategy and attrition. You can be justifiably happy with the result if youre a Ferrari fan, but please don't call that an awesome race. COOP

I have some very nice, '72 front bumper over-riders that I'll be bringing along to the event. They are complete units including rubber and hardware and the chrome is near perfect. COOP

Full, custom cage, built by Roger Hamlin of Hamlin Fabrication at Sears Point Raceway. He's a true artist. COOP

He has the original wheels with tires...They're shown extensively in his BaT pictures. COOP

Really? I don't know about that one AA, just given the production #s of tii vs carbed (about a 1:10 ratio), not to mention the mythic-iconic status of the tii as "the one to have." But what do I know...Personally, I love 'em all. COOP

$33.5K. It can't logically approach $50K as that was the hammer price for the Verona '72 tii on BaT a month or so back: (http://bringatrailer.com/listing/1972-bmw-2002tii-7/). A desirable early 2002, a quintessential 70s color, an honest, strong-but-not-slick presentation, extensive documentation, long-time ownership and a car that just feels right for the right reasons. This will prove a meaningful, non-tii comp for the community. Not feeling the carpet color relative to the tobacco seats/door panels though, I must confess. COOP

Oh my God Anders, seriously?! This is so freaking "last week," it's now officially boring me into a coma. Yeah, sure, cool, whatever, that's fine. We can agree to disagree. Bottom line, I thought your original post was lame...and I still think it is lame when I re-read it...I explained clearly why I felt that way which is nothing more than my meaningless/ful opinion...I don't, however, think you're lame (au contraire, I think you're a huge asset here) and as I said, I've always enjoyed you, your beautiful cars and your writing...and I look forward to enjoying a lot more great contributions from you. So for chrissakes, enough already. COOP

Yeah, but the Chinese Grand Prix was as BORING as any F1 race I've seen, with Verstappen's ballsiness being a notable exception. I keep trying to be a fan, year after year...but it's continually a processional snooze-fest, where the winner is usually a product of pit strategy rather than action on the race track. Me, I get my racing excitement fix from MotoGP. COOP

Hello 02ANDERS... Your post didn't personally offend me in the slightest, because I am neither rich nor an automotive investor in the distilled, purified form that you defined. I have two, pretty nice 2002s that I suppose have some value and which will continue to appreciate should the current trend continue...But I don't have any active intentions of selling them as I'd likely regret it, regardless of what someone paid for them...but who knows, I still might for the right money, and weep with regret until I die. Your post did offend my affinity for good journalism however, simply because I feel that it was teeming with sweeping generalizations and gross mischaracterizations. In my view, you created two artificial, polar extremes of "real enthusiasts" and "investors" which is problematic because the delineations are rarely so clean and distinct. There are too many enthusiasts who also view their cars as part of their investment portfolio (I'm in that group, because I'm not well-off enough not to look at them that way) and too many investors who also happen to genuinely enjoy their cars as enthusiasts, even if they wouldn't hesitate to "flip" them at any moment for the right dollars. Your post doesn't recognize the overlap between the two groups, which isn't realistic. I believe that this group that you continually allude to, those whose "actions concerning classic cars are purely that of an investor," actually represents a miniscule percentage of the explanation for the rise in prices. I just don't believe that there are very many of those people compared to genuine, well-off enthusiasts who are driving up the prices because they can finally afford the objects of their grad school fantasies after decades of hard work and they WANT (demand) the cars and because there aren't many of these autos to go around (supply). In other words, the people who, in your words aren't "doing our hobby any good" are...er, members of our hobby for the most part. It's just the market at work...you don't have to like it, but it's reality. The other thing you said that doesn't ring true is that "not once do I divide people in to groups based on their financial means." Well Anders, just who do you think is driving up the prices of classic cars, poor people? No, it is people with significant financial means, regardless of where they rank on your "enthusiast-O-meter," and I would again argue that most of them ARE true enthusiasts, regardless of their investment motives and timing of hold vs sell. I personally don't see why a real enthusiast couldn't buy a car, enjoy it for 6 months for all the right reasons and then shamelessly flip it for a huge profit without his enthusiast credentials being at risk. You and others may disagree with that, which is just fine...I still love you. My purpose of paraphrasing your two groupings ("rabid car enthusiasts vs ruthless speculators") was to highlight just how unrealistic I thought they were relative to the actual actors and circumstances. Last and definitely not least: I 100% agree with you (how could anyone not agree?) that the rise in prices of classic cars brings with it negative and sad repercussions, particularly to enthusiasts of modest means who become priced out of the market for the cars that they love so much, but can no longer afford to own and maintain. I am not in any way insensitive to that reality but I don't see the same villain that you do, any more than I see it in the demographic shifts in real estate, which are far more sad because we're talking about people being displaced from their homes (I don't work in real estate btw). Again Anders, I have always enjoyed your posts and surely will continue to do so. I just feel that you missed the mark "wide-right" on this one. We don't have to see everything the same, which is the beauty of this forum and of being a humanoid in a democratic (and capitalistic) society. I respectfully don't have the time to address each of your "6 points of light" dissertation (just being candid in a hopefully lighthearted way) but I feel I've sufficiently explained my position. COOP

OMG, 02Anders...With all due respect, what an endless fount of drivel-spew. Ours is a Capitalist economy. If you find it so "rather sad" that the prices for things are driven by the forces of supply and demand, you can always move to a Communist bastion, where you don't have to deal with such offending annoyances as market forces...or with basic freedoms for that matter. Who says you can't be an an investor AND a "proper, hard core enthusiast?" You? You lay out these two, diametrically opposing camps as if they're mutually exclusive, which they most certainly are not. Perhaps it would be better to more specifically define your two make-believe groups for the sake of academic exercise as "rabid, long-time car enthusiasts of modest means" on the one hand and "ruthless, wealthy, arriviste speculators who don't give two shits about cars" on the other. To highlight the flaws of your classification system, picture the billionaire car collector at the Monterey Historics, flogging his $20M Ferrari around Laguna at the risk of unimaginable peril with an ear-to-ear grin. What if 15 years ago he was a struggling, Stanford drop-out, slaving away on a tech startup dream with a ratty tii in the driveway that he autocrossed on the weekends and bloodied his knuckles wrenching on? Is he now less of an "original" and "proper" car enthusiast than you, having sold his company to Facebook for a fortune and gladly dropping $150K on an '02 Turbo? C'mon now. The irony here is that your self-authorized distinction makes the grass roots, "original enthusiasts" appear far more elitist and snooty than the fat-cat investors with briefcases overflowing with Benjamins, who by your decree must naturally care less about the cars themselves. I'm sorry, I've read lots of great, engaging posts from you over the years, but that ain't one of them. COOP

Roger Hamlin is the MAN! He built my roll cage years ago and it turned out amazingly. What a genius and a great guy to boot. Would love to see your car in his shop some day. Congrats on an absolute piece of art, can't wait for its final unveiling. COOP

Wait...You mean like a "telephone" telephone?! ;-) COOP

Holy CRAP that M2 is exquisite!! Incredible attention to detail, BRAVO! COOP

Hey Mark...Respectfully, the above doesn't make a lot of sense (to me). You say that you initially had a higher reserve in mind but that BaT convinced you to lower it. You then say that the auction didn't "naturally" reach even the lower number set by BaT, with your acquiescence. Finally, you conclude that the moral of the story is "don't let BaT persuade you to lower your reserve." Any auctioneer (BaT, Barrett-Jackson, Sotheby's, Mecum, Etc) wants the car to sell, because they don't get paid unless that happens...which is why they're not going to want to devote their resources to a vehicle with a reserve that they feel is out of whack with what the market will bear. You agreed to their terms. If you feel an auctioneer is pricing your vehicle for a guaranteed "quick sale" as opposed to maximizing its true potential, you can always decline or negotiate more forcefully with supporting data. If the final hammer didn't reach BaT's recommended (lower) reserve without them "making up the difference," then by consequence it wouldn't have reached a higher (your ideal) reserve level. So what was lost by their persuasion (assuming of course that they wouldn't have contributed even more to the final, naturally occurring result in order to make up the distance between the final hammer price and the reserve # that you originally wanted)? Not trying to give you a hard time btw! COOP PS: Cool that Pagenaud bought it. I got to meet the whole Penske IRL team last year at Sonom. He was the most down to earth.

How do you get "gypped" selling a car through an auction? You set your reserve price based on your bottom line and the market speaks. What am I missing? Do you mean that you made a mistake in not setting the reserve higher? That looked like a nice car btw, I remember it on BaT. COOP

Will be interesting to see how this one does on BaT...right on the heels of the big, Verona '72tii sale; http://bringatrailer.com/listing/1974-bmw-2002tii-7/ COOP

Lol, without question my favorite part of this thread was waiting for your response mlytle...you didn't disappoint! I would have paid strong money to see your facial expression at the moment when you first viewed the phrase "Bluetooth programmable fan controller!" Overkill or not, I do appreciate the creativity and individuality here. COOP