Need Advice, 1M with suspect history

[persianbmw91]

its a carmax car just wondering if anyone knows anything about this alpine white fully optioned 1m that was sold to burbank carmax recently.

WBSUR9C51BVP76199

the car has some weird paint issue:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oT...DEI86Y0M3SPBUn

at what price does this buy make sense?

They are asking 59k with 25k miles. I spent 1k to have it shipped from Burbank already. I'm worried this might forever compromise the car. The carfax is totally clean, and shows only 2 owners.

[persianbmw91]

I have it on hold so its hidden. It looks like the car has been repainted. its kind of shady. There is overspray on the rear tail light, orange peel on the rear quarter panel, and the fitment is off. I'm not sure if I should pass. They are asking 59k with 25k miles. I spent 1k to have it shipped from Burbank already. I'm worried this might forever compromise the car. The carfax is totally clean, and shows only 2 owners.

[nachob]

Originally Posted by persianbmw91

I have it on hold so its hidden. It looks like the car has been repainted. its kind of shady. There is overspray on the rear tail light, orange peel on the rear quarter panel, and the fitment is off. I'm not sure if I should pass. They are asking 59k with 25k miles. I spent 1k to have it shipped from Burbank already. I'm worried this might forever compromise the car. The carfax is totally clean, and shows only 2 owners.

For that price, the paint should at least look good And match. Some repairs don't make it on Carfax.

[ayao]

59k for a car with questionable provenance seems like too much.

[persianbmw91]

what would you guys say a fair price is for this as it sits.

[nachob]

Originally Posted by persianbmw91

what would you guys say a fair price is for this as it sits.

No one has seen it. No pictures available etc. If not fixed correctly I would use nada rough trade in price of $47k. You can then paint it yourself to your taste. $59k sounds too high if not repaired correctly. With 59k you can find several 1Ms at that price point

[champignon]

Originally Posted by persianbmw91

what would you guys say a fair price is for this as it sits.

I'm not a huge proponent of CarFax, however the way I read the report I would *guess* that this was really a single owner car with an owner who briefly moved to Arizona and then back to the San Diego area. Since the car was primarily serviced at one dealership, the one in Encinitas, you might be able to call their service department and get a hold of someone who is actually familiar with this car. If you were super super lucky (don't count on it) you might even be able to find out who was the owner and speak to him or her. You also could look at the 1M registry here and try to see if the prior owner registered it here on the forum and if you could find some of his posts.

If the car really has been repainted and presumably was damaged, then I'd be leery of buying it, period, unless I could get the details.

[nachob]

Originally Posted by persianbmw91

what would you guys say a fair price is for this as it sits.

Just saw the pictures. Fughetabout it. That is a terrible repair job. There are several cleaner ones you can find at that price point. What a shame! Who does that to a 1M!!!!

[GimmeanM]

BMW Service history:

Sounds like some paint blemish was discovered at PDI. Unfortunately this refers to bird poo on the roof.

[GimmeanM]

Originally Posted by nachob

Just saw the pictures. Fughetabout it. That is a terrible repair job. There are several cleaner ones you can find at that price point. What a shame! Who does that to a 1M!!!!

Just saw the pics too... That doesn't look like the factory trunk, right? Should be flat with the lip as a separate piece bonded on.

OP, are the paint blemishes on the trunk, or on the bumper? If it's just the trunk it may be safe to assume that it's not from an accident, but just having the trunk painted (albeit very poorly) while on the car.

[champignon]

I'm no expert on paint, but I also question if what you are seeing is a bad "repaint" job. It looks more like a not-very-good initial paint job vs. after the fact corrosion. I don't know what the "overspray" seen in the photo is. Maybe it is actually the result of some clumsy attempt to hide the paint irregularities, like with touch-up paint?

My big concern would be corrosion, and that the irregular paint is actually the sign of something bad going on underneath, in the underlying metal.

This car appears to have lived almost all of its life in coastal N. San Diego county. If the car was not garaged, it is certainly possible that the salt air or salt spray has corroded the body of this car, which would make the car really unappealing.

Are there any paint issues on the body panels as opposed to those you point out in seams?

[CarJunkie]

That is a horrendous pain job. Someone wanted to quickly cover up damage or scratches and didn't do it right. If you see alignment issues between panels, that could also indicate it was hit and the repair was sloppy.

If you are shopping for a collector, this is not it.

If you are looking for a track car, get it on a lift to make sure its all sound underneath, and offer 47k, and pat yourself on the back for a great find!

[persianbmw91]

you can see the over spray in these pics, i didn't notice any issues with the trunk, but you can see orange peel on the quarter panel in the photo of the tail light, there is white paint on it. I added some extra pictures from carmax they sent me this today.

"There appears to be no evidence of any significant impact. Structurally this vehicle is sound and all of the parts on the vehicle are original.


Besides the overspray, this vehicle meets all of CarMax's standards. We can remove the overspray from the taillamp and exhaust for you."

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Un?usp=sharing

[Black Gold]

Walk

Too expensive even if it was clean imo

[persianbmw91]

thanks guys, appreciate the advice.

[champignon]

I bought a 135is convertible from Carmax 2 years and 4 months ago. Like you, I paid almost $1000 to have it shipped across the country, in this case from South Carolina to Utah, where I picked it up (there is now a Carmax in Idaho, but back then the SLC dealer was the closest one to me). The car only had around 6500 miles on it, and had been owned by two different people for short periods of time, neither of them putting very many miles on it. The car was 2 years old but essentially brand new, and sold at a discount of around 40% to the MSRP. I still own the car; it is terrific.

When you pay Carmax to ship a car you are taking a risk, but nowhere near the sort of risk if you just bought somebody's used car sight unseen, and had it shipped to you. In this case your risk is the shipping cost. $1000 isn't chump change, but on the other hand it's not a lot compared to what you could lose by buying someone else's disaster. This is the kind of loss that you walk away from and forget about a couple of weeks later.

Carmax isn't known for selling cars cheaply. In my case, I happened to buy the car at the very beginning of winter, and convertibles don't sell well then, so the car was priced accordingly. In your case, this 1M isn't being given away, and you have enough questions about it to stand back, take a deep breath, and decide that losing $1K is way less than losing almost $60K.

From my understanding, Carmax does not negotiate on prices and the people in the local store probably do not even have the ability to reduce the price for you. If the car was more attractively priced, then perhaps it would be worth investigating the problem further. For this car, at this price, I would just walk away and be glad that I'm only out a thousand dollars.

I had one used/vintage BMW that I lost $20K on, bought from a private party, that turned out to be a rusted pile of garbage. That "learning experience" taught me never to buy a car at long distance, sight unseen. Would I pay to have Carmax ship another car across the country so that I could have a look at it? That would depend on what kind of car it was, how hard it would be for me find another one, and how much I wanted the car. But if I did do that, I would not hesitate to take one look at the car and refuse to buy it in the end.

[Gangplank]

Contact your insurance agent. They can pull the real historical record on the car.

What price? If you can find out what happened, how much to fix the paint job, and THEN the question is why are you buying it? As an investment or because you want a 1M

[RDSACNQ]

Easy answer, just walk away.

[JP-1M]

Walk away. For that price should be close to pristine.

[nachob]

Originally Posted by JP-1M

Walk away. For that price should be close to pristine.

Ditto. You are paying good price. Should be better than that

[hunterl41]

+1 for walking away from that one.

That's a mint condition price, and if you shell that out for a non mint condition car, you can be sure you're never going to get that $ back out of it.

[persianbmw91]

Originally Posted by hunterl41

+1 for walking away from that one.

That's a mint condition price, and if you shell that out for a non mint condition car, you can be sure you're never going to get that $ back out of it.

I'm confused by how clean the photos look behind the bumper.

I think they'll come down on the price, or I would expect them to throw another set of new tires and the 130k mile warranty since they didn't know about this issue either. I get the sense that they are going to work with me. It sounds like i can even get the transfer fee back if I want to walk.

If I buy any 1m my plan will be to drive it for as long as I can afford to maintain an n54, so the warranty is really the major draw.