The Great Barn Find. E36 M3. Part 1 - Discovery
The year was 1995, and it was a crisp late winter day in central Virginia. Me, a 16-year-old with a recently minted driver’s license, out for a drive in my proudest life achievement to date, a 1991 Honda Civic. Destination: nowhere. The CD player was spinning anything from Pearl Jam’s Ten, to They Might be Giants or some early days of Moby in the mix (Move was a favorite). Such drives were a regular occurrence during my teen years, moments of solitude that allowed me the space to think while rowing the gears on that 1.5-liter four-cylinder (nay even a tachometer to be found). Main roads, scenic roads, solely focused on the activity at hand. On this particular outing, I stopped by a local Barnes and Noble, likely to peruse the ample automotive magazine section (my particular branch of the retailer would carry ‘JDM’ specific Option 2, alongside more notable classics like Sport Compact Car and the infamous DuPont Registry). I read them all cover to cover, monthly, and sometimes - I even purchased a few. The love of cars was a firm part of my being at age 16, I had subscriptions to both Car & Driver and Road & Track magazines from the moment that middle school had us walking door to door to slinging subscriptions for fundraising. My interests were divided into two, the first category being what I viewed as ‘obtainable’ - primarily used Honda’s that I will eventually get into modifying, ‘aspirational’ - namely BMW’s, and ‘bonkers’, Porsche 911s and other supercars that I aspire to own but never figure I would be able to attain. So it should come as no surprise how excited I was, on that particular day, to encounter a car in the Barnes & Noble parking lot that I had lusted for since seeing it on the cover of one of my favorite magazines the year prior. A Yellow BMW M3 - or what we will modernly refer to as a Dakar Yellow E36 M3 Coupe. I was in love, the vision still etched into my head clear as day. This car in particular was the business. The performer, yuppies flocked to all the standard badged cars in the ’90s but ‘insiders’ knew the M cars were where the real excitement was. That encounter, though only lasting a few moments, remained seared in my brain for a lifetime. Filed away in the mental Rolodex of a time I was in love and had unabashed joy in what I saw.
25+ years later, my journey as an automotive enthusiast has taken twists and turns into many different areas. I rode the JDM craze into the early 2000s with engine swapped Honda’s, dabbled in autocross for a few seasons, and attained my ‘dream car’ at the time, the enviable Honda S2000. It wasn't long after that that I made my transition into the more grown-up BMW arena with the purchase of a brand new 128i in 2010. Things progressed from there, with many project cars in the mix (318ti, 525i, 740i), a fun sports car (1998 M Roadster) and a 2015 F80 M3. As my age continued to tick into my 40’s I found myself looking back at what I may have missed. Then, somewhat unceremoniously, while out for a drive, I happened upon a relatively clean E36 M3 that had not been relegated to the ‘stanced’ drift builds that is the fate of many BMW’s once they hit the bottom of their depreciation curve. The experience harkened back to the Dakar Yellow vision from so many many years before. I went home and immediately began looking at what the E36 market had to offer.
Enter The ‘Barn Find’: 1995 Avus Blue E36 M3 Coupe
It’s only been a handful of times in my life that I have been fortunate enough to fall into the serendipity of the right place / right time. I would count the discovery of my E36 M3 as one of them. Late one night, while browsing eBay motors classifieds, I happened upon an E36 M3 listing that was a “Barn Find’ in every sense of the word. The photos were horrible, the description was brief, but there was little doubt in what I was seeing. A 1995 Avus Blue M3 Coupe that had not run or been driven in over 15 years. Typically I would have moved on to something else as I’ve had too many ‘been there, done that’ experiences with ‘restoring’ older BMWs only to lose my shirt in the end. However, there was something about this car that gave me pause. Firstly, it has always been a dream of mine to pull a non-running vehicle out of such conditions and experience the satisfaction of restoring its proper working order (it had been a dream of mine to do so with an air-cooled 911, but those days have long passed by). Secondly, the vehicle seems void of any form of rust. I learned that this was a single-owner car, and the seller had simply parked it with the intention of tucking it away for a while, then the years turned into decades. It was his aspiration to restore the car himself to its former glory, but a career change and other factors were forcing the issue of rehoming the vehicle. The attractive ‘Buy it Now’ price was low - in the vicinity of what a good set of wheels and tires would cost on a modern car. Regardless, I decided to sleep on it (a promise I had made to myself years prior after being smoked so many times on impulse car purchases). I woke up the next day, ready to press ‘buy it now’. In this case, though, the plan backfired as a purchaser in Texas had beat me to the punch. Being the persistent type that I am, I again reached out to the seller saying if for some reason the sale falls through, I will take it no questions asked. A day passes by, and sure enough, the buyer bailed out at the cost of transporting the vehicle halfway across the country. Thus, it was ready to come to me. Woohoo!
I quickly arranged transport and the seller was kind enough to take some great photos of the departure process on his end. He seemed relieved that his M3 was going to a good home, one that would take care of it and restore it to the original vision of what an M3 is intended to be. I was excited for so many reasons, primarily that I was fulfilling a dream from a much younger version of myself, and knew that I would do whatever it takes to restore the OE quality of this car.
