Strange coincidence
As an affirmed car junkie, I’m always ‘looking around’ for interesting cars…. though these days, it’s purely to look and not acquire since we’re pretty happy with the wagon and minivan.
One of the places I look is on eBay, which I visited almost daily in the first half of last year in my quest to find the right wagon. Yesterday, while I was looking at the BMW wagons available on eBay, I fondly remembered my beloved 1988 BMW M5, which I bought the day before I started at InstallShield (September 1996) and traded in on the 540i in February of 2000, and casually decided to do a search.
In the search results, I was surprised to find an E28 M5, like I had, among the more recent examples. This was pretty amazing, as these were quite rare with only about 1200 or so making it into the US in 1988.
As I looked at the 40+ pictures of the car on the eBay posting, I experienced a funny feeling of deja vu – the non-standard shift boot (like the one I had in my car); the missing seat badge on the driver’s seat (like the one in my car); the last 4 digits of the VIN were ‘1664′ which seemed oddly familiar (as….in…my….car). I know…you’re probably thinking “what kind of wacko remembers his car’s VIN?”
Conveniently, the eBay seller included a free link to the Carfax vehicle history report for this car which allowed me to do some more verification.
That sealed it.
From the Carfax “Detailed Vehicle History” it was in a dealer’s inventory in Schaumburg in August 1996…. it had title registered in Elk Grove Village (where I lived in 1996) at the end of 1996….it was sold to a dealership in Naperville in 2000 (Bill Jacobs Motorsport where I leased the 540).
Amazing…. it was my M5.
I haven’t seen it in over 6 years and some nearly forty thousand miles and, while it definitely shows the extra years and mileage and seems like it hasn’t been cared for too well (what’s with the ugly steering wheel cover and missing wheel center caps?), overall it doesn’t look too bad for an 18 year old car.
For a brief moment, I thought ‘what if…?’ ….but then quickly navigated away.