I was working at Silverstone Auctions when that came in so gave it a very brief wipe over. It sold for £25,875.
Looked the part and had plenty of torque and grunt! Unfortunately it handled like a 1971 3.0 Capri on crossplys. There can't be many l yeah! And quite a good looking bit of kit at the time with masses of torque and power.There can't be that many left cos they didn't make many and most of them ended upside down in a ditch due to having handling like a 1971 3 Litre Capri on crossplys
That wasn't by far one of my worst "chop deals!" - I will admit to doing a levels swap for a 1969 TVR TUSCAN V8 for a Series one and a half 4.2 E Type drop head! It's all relative because my E Type was a ratty old dog and when I drove the V8 (4.7 Yank Windsor lump!) with a plastic body that weighed less than a cheap overcoat- it blew my mind totally! I didn't know cars went that bloody fast.I saw some classic auction prog on sky the other day and a lovely V8 Tuscan (by no means a show stopper?) made over $130,000!
Bloody hell - that's strong money! Bet it's already in the Double Glazing showroom parked on cheap nylon red carpet with a VIP rope guarding it from schoolboy sticky fingers and a laminated "please do not touch" notice
If it was a LHD US import then it would have been an M6, otherwise it'd have been an M635CSi? They didn't handle badly, these were M cars after all, and the standard E24 was a fairly tidy handling thing compared to other comparable large GT cars of the day. Depends what was expected and asked of it I suppose. You did well though, as an RS500 was priced just a shade under £20k in 1985 whereas an M635CSi retailed at almost £34k in the same year (£7k more than a standard 635CSi - which shows that the Motorsport division had done a tad more than just plonk an M1 engine in it) , a 928S2 was only another £1,500 quid. I'd imagine some cash must have flowed toward the BMW's former owner for that one to fly? In stock form, wasn't the RS500 actually slower than the standard Cosworth? I seem to recall that thanks to the extra aero the thing wasn't as quick but was built to homologate the lower spoiler, and once SVO got cracking the thing would then work better on track? Is that right? I was only ten at the time, and pocket money didn't stretch that far... even if it did, I'd have been hunting down a Delta S4 Stradale, or even one of the old-hat 037s...
Yes you are right it was a RHD 635csi but even main BMW dealers referred to them as M6's - I actually bought it from the guy who purchased it split new from Altwood BMW in slough.I seem to remember you are right about the RS 500 being slower due to the extra large lip on the rear wing but they were easier to tune up than the standard Cossie.I had 2 Cosworth hatchbacks before the RS500 - one in white and one in moonstone and later had a 2WD sapphire Cossie in white that had been Brodie Britain tweaked up with group one injectors,bigger turbo and virtually straight through big bore exhaust.That was the quickest of the whole lot - I put it on the rolling road at Power Engineering in Uxbridge and it gave a readout of 480bhp! Bloody thing could spin the rear wheels up in 3rd gear and was lethal
They've always been interesting but I've never owned one. Had a couple of chances to and they never seemed "special" enough... the power is undeniable, and the potential was widely unlocked. To my eyes though, nothing is more beautiful than this. I will never own one but you can keep every Ferrari ever built, I'll have one of these please...
The Intergrale was a real one off.I never kept one as a personal driver but probably quite a few passed through my hands that I traded to a mate of mine who specialised in Deltas and Audi Quattro turbos.He always told me that they had a bad reputation because very few people totally understood them and knew their quirks? I had a Stratos for a while - an ex race car that we used as a display car in our posh branch.I also had probably the last Ford RS 200 that was cobbled together from all the parts laying about when Ford Motorsport pulled the plug on the whole sorry project.The shits at the DVLA would only give it a Q plate as Ford wouldn't give it an official chassis plate and VIN number as it was a parts bin build.I sent the car to south of France for a year and a half and registered it on an official French plate and then imported it with Sierra XR4 2.0 tag and plate from a scrapper.The shit proper hit the fan when they worked that one out but by then it was in a private collection
Crazy crazy money but few were produced,most were smashed to bits or stolen which leaves only a small handful of original unmolested examples out there?A mate of mines Uncle last year sold his one owner low mileage original MK 1 Escort RS 1800 BDA for £118,000 and it went all the way to Japan!
Wish to God that I had kept a photographic record of all my cars,trucks and motorcycles that were my personal rides from 17 till now?
Think that final price on Silverstone Auctions site of £25875 did Inc commission and vat, I'll find out, but you are correct would of broke the £30k barrier in total if not. Probably will go straight into another collection.
