[bensoda]

Hey everyone, picked up a 2011 Deep Sea Blue 128i 6MT a couple of weeks ago and wanted to start a thread on it because I enjoy the process of documenting my ownership of a car and have found that forums like this one are a great place to meet fellow enthusiasts of a platform and mainly to ask questions about the car when I don't know what the answer is lol.

I had been looking for a fun entry-level "sports car" which really meant something that had 3 pedals, RWD, and that was in my budget. I looked at Miatas, 350Zs, BRZs/FRSs, and a few others but nothing really interested me until I started looking at the 128s. It seemed like the perfect balance between a refined and fun car that was fairly reliable mechanically. You could also find pretty clean examples that had been well cared for which seemed to be a pretty big rarity for the aforementioned cars.

So about this car, I saw it pop up for sale and jumped on it almost instantly. I was immediately drawn to it because of the color and it appeared to have been extremely well-maintained. When I went to see the car in person it looked just as good, if not better, than it had in the listing photos. After talking with the seller, who had owned the car for the past 7 years, and a short test drive I bought it. Drove it back down from LA to San Diego in rush hour traffic and fell completely in love with the car.

As far as specs it’s pretty basic. Non-Sport Package as you can probably tell but the seller had installed Biltien B8s with the OEM Sport Springs. Because of this, I didn’t really care that it didn’t have the sport package as I can find used sports seats if I really want to. Currently sits at ~100,700 miles with a lot of big service items done within the past 30k miles.

I don’t really have any large plans for this car at the moment besides just driving it and enjoying it. I will probably look into getting a slight tint on the windows but that’s not super urgent. I would like to do the water pump and thermostat sooner rather than later as I have no record of either ever being replaced and at 100K miles they’re probably due. I’ll be doing that job myself as I do all my own work on my cars (anything from oil changes to complete engine rebuilds), so if anyone has any tips let me know.

This is my first BMW so I’m excited to get to know this platform and the community along with it. Seems like there’s quite a lot of you in the SoCal area. This is already by far my favorite car I’ve owned and I’m really looking forward to getting to know the car more and really just enjoying the experience of owning and driving it.