[jagcool]

I got the worst car news ever yesterday. Thankfully no human injuries. Transporting my car across the country due to my family moving. Learned the transporter‘s trailer caught fire in Utah on I80. Total loss of all 9 cars. I’m devastated that my ‘01 330xi w/115k that I had lovingly put hundreds of hours into and gotten thousands of great hours behind the wheel in, is now a husk of charred metal. Need to recoup mentally/emotionally before getting another e46. Anyone know of a well taken care of e46, manual transmission, 4 doors (sedan or better yet touring), +/- xi within ~100 miles of the portland Oregon area?

RIP

She’s right in front of the blue Alfa facing backwards.

 

[jagcool]

At the end of the day, I think the final struggle will be getting an amount that is as close as I can get to replacing my car with one of similar characteristics. It wasn't a ZHP, it wasn't an M3, it wasn't a show car, but it was in extremely good condition and all maintenance had been done with OEM/similar parts. I will get a million different responses, but I'm hoping for 6-8k from insurance... am I crazy? Any ideas for finding comps? autotrader listings aren't great, bring-a-trailer doesn't have many that aren't M3 or ZHP... other ideas for finding current listings of reasonable value? Given how used prices have spiked since COVID, listings from 2020 or earlier seem generally too-low compared to what I will likely have to pay now. The classifieds section on this forum also doesn't have too many recent examples.

 

[jagcool]

Thanks for all the ideas. I like the e46 because I’m completely set up for programming modules and comfortable with that era‘s tech (i.e. non-tech) and the following 2006+ cars have iDrive 1.0 which I despise and there isn’t a good other option for that system that I’m aware of (Like there are in e46 re CarPlay or BlueBus). I’m considering a 2002 e39 525iT wagon with a manual swap, but I wish it was the 330 or at least the 328 for a car that heavy. Looks like good records but i don’t have a good resource yet for all the common issues like I know so well on e46. I think it still might be m52/54?

 

[jagcool]

The driver says two tires that were just changed on the trailer at a Les Schwab the day before the fire burst (I’m not sure how he knows) and some sort of friction started the tires on fire then the whole thing went up he said he tried 5 extinguishers and failed. Again, I’m glad he wasn’t hurt.