2020 Adds One More Zinger with Quarter-million Dollar E30 M3
If you were on the fence about buying an E30 M3, your opportunities may have dried up. This one just sold for $250,000.
Up is down, down is up, and 2020 can’t get any more weird. The headline reads correctly, though. Because on Bring-A-Trailer, a low-mileage E30 M3 just sold for a hefty $250,000. But that said, this Zinnoberrot red M3 with tan interior saw last-day bidding sky rocket, with the final concluding bid going to a user named SouthFloridaWings. According to B-A-T activity, this is the only vehicle they have ever bid on.
To its credit, the car is in remarkable condition, covering just 8,000 miles in its lifetime. The car barely accumulated any mileage over the past ten years of ownership by the seller. And its not even an M3 Evo despite having a factory sport evolution rear spoiler.
There must be something about this particular combination of car and color which meant SouthFloridaWings was willing to bid on this car twenty times in total. It isn’t an early example, it isn’t a one-of-one, it wasn’t a display at an auto show. But otherwise, theres nothing notable or special about this E30. It’s just an M3. Well at least there was nothing special, because now this one is infamous.
So is this a price trend that we just haven’t paid attention to? Nope, not at all. Bizarrely, other E30 M3’s auctioned recently on B-A-T sold in the $45,000-$60,000 range, making this M3 a real outlier. In fact, according to the dots on their graph, one M3 sold for $102,000 over two years ago, but that’s the only one that comes close. Yeah, we don’t understand it either.
After the whirlwind of this auction, we can only think that E30 prices will largely remain the same. This one is just too odd to really change any markets, but perhaps other 80’s performance car will see a bit more attention in the coming years. Factory performance cars such as the 190 E Cosworth, XR4Ti, and more could see increases in value soon. At some point in the future we’ll be thinking about and saying “wow, you could get those for a few thousand dollars just a few years ago.”
Photos: Bring-A-Trailer
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