srhutch said:
Felix79 said:
I got my M-Roadster last Nov and this is the stuff I wanted to have present.
When I looked at the car, I wanted to see things like an "Honest" engine bay. This means, that it should be tidy with no oil leaks etc, but I didn't want it to look like it had an engine/bay clean. Cars with shiny clean bays, means there was something that needed cleaning up or is done to hide something. Also, my old man was a car detailer for 20 years and he usually would refuse to clean an engine as it is a risky thing. Back when his business was part of a francise, the larger company would do the RAC rally, cleaning off the race cars at the end of day stage. Because of the pressure washer, some of the cars could be killed off if high pressure water hit the wrong part.
You also wouldn't want to look at many forum members engine bays with regards to ///M's as most will be spotless (Garage Queens anyway)
Dad use to get asked to do engine bays all the time back when he was running his valeting business. He really didn't like doing them, as it was too easy to cause problems.
If you're doing a concorse/show car, then sure it's understandable. The Z4M's engine bay is actually a good blank canvas, to put some shiny bits on and have it all looking nice.
With my M, I have been much more reserved about taking it out like I did with my previous cars. But both my Alpina and Impreza P1 ended up with so much rust on the rear arches. We had 3 cars in the household back then, so my car would spend most of it's time outside. It was seeing my P1 rotting away on the driveway when my back was really bad, that made me sell it. It was too painful seeing it just rust away, after all the things I had done to the car. At least now, with the house only having two cars, I am able to keep my M garaged when I'm not using the car.
Back on topic a bit more. My car had two previous owners who both owned the car for about 5/6 years each and going through all the paperwork/history of the car, you can tell they both really loved the car and I wouldn't be surprised if they were once members on here. Both of them had put private plates on the car and when ever the car was getting it's service, there would always be little extra bits they would get done. I got really lucky with my M, as I didn't have anything else to check over remotely close to Oxford. I was actually wanting to check out a blue '06 E85 M, which was lower millage, but the dealership (which was down Portsmouth way) never bothered to call us back when we told them that we wanted to buy their car, but ideally do a P/X with the JCW Mini.
I'm not sure for other parts of the UK, but for Z4MR's and the Alpina roadsters, they all seemed to be around 100 miles away from me in Oxford. Because of my lower spinal damage, it was really difficult for me to do long round trip to look at any of the cars. All the guides that I read say that you should never just buy the first car you look at, but I ended up doing just that. I'm not sure how active the E85M marketplace is, but there were 6 real M's for sale when I was looking in Nov (there was a guy who had a 3.0, and he done all the cosmetic changes to make it look like an M and even posted it on a few sites as an M, with a line of text mixed in with it's info that it was "just" a 3.0) , which is meant to be a better time to buy a roadster/convertible.
Marlon 
i think anyone attempting to manipulate this forum would soon be outed 
North West Surrey
