On 15 April 2023 I was sitting on my couch doing my usual Facebook marketplace round. I don’t know why but I changed my location from The Netherlands to Luxembourg. I typed in BMW M3 in the search bar and hit search.

I immediately spotted a brand new advertising with the title ‘Bmw M3 E30 Cecotto’ Placed 1 hour ago..

Wow, how the day changed then and there. I must have read the ad ten times before I realized this just might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. People often asked me what my perfect M3 would look like and I always answered any E30 M3 as long as the colour is Macou Blue. For the enthousiast that know any E30 M3 in Macou Blue is a Special edition such as an EVO 2, Ravaglia, Europameister or a M3 convertible. In this period of my life I was thinking of buying a M3 but in my price range shopping for a special edition was just unthinkable and something I definitely could not afford.

This car was offered by a very nice gentleman who had owned the car for over 15 years.

Eventually he pulled up in his car and within the first minute we spoke my heart sanked to the ground as the seller almost immiadetly told me 2 German guys had viewed the car yesterday and also this morning he had some viewers that were very interested.

All this time I was thinking I would have a private sale and that I was the first person to view it. The first 5 minutes of seeing the car and talking to the owner I was physically there but in my mind I thought well this guy just wants to start a bidding war and see which person overbids the most on his asking price.

After talking for a while I asked him why the other persons did not buy it, he said to me that he felt those guys did not show any passion or knowledge about the car. He told me that even one of them tried to convince him that the 4 cilinder S14 engine was not right and that there should be a 6 cilinder in that car! Wow okay almost hard to believe but the seller was quite offended by that so he wanted a second day of people viewing the car.

I began to realise that even though he needed the money and the car was for sale it did hurt him to sell it and he wanted it to go to someone who would actually restore it and knew exactly what he was buying and knew why it was a special car. So I began to point out all the things that were cecotto specific and that there were also a few things missing on his car such as the fog lights which any cecotto must have. I noticed him ease up and he started to talk with passion.

I began to do some checks sucha as the chassisnumber. Does it fall into the cecotto range? Yes, and does the engine has the specific details like the 4S2 Code? Yes. No issues what so ever the car even though appart looked amazing.

While we were talking, with me doing my absolute best to convince him that I was the right guy to sell the car to another car pulled up with German licence plates..

Sure enough, more people arrived wanting to view the car. He walked outside and told them to wait around because he was still busy with me. He came back and must have seen the look on my face because I was standing in front of my dream car and started to feel quite some pressure with all these other people trying to buy it from him.

Standing in front of the car I reached out my hand to him saying I would buy it for full asking price (which included some BBS RS wheels that came with the car). He did not grab my hand and began talking some more…. Damn am I about to lose this opportunity? Is he going to wait out for more people? I then said to him look I know every little detail about this car its part of my job I have all the parts and knowledge to bring this car back on the road and to its former glory.

So i tried again; how about you keep the wheels or have me pay more for it even though that wasn’t really in the cards for me. He still did not responded, I think the German guys outside started to notice that I was trying to close this deal because they walked in again even when they were told to wait. So the owner told them again to wait outside. He walked back in and after a few moments of silence he said to me I think you know what you are talking about and I think you will fix it I can see passion. So I want you to buy it..

I asked him ok how much do you want me to pay extra? He said, you are not going to pay extra I am a man of my word and you can buy the car as it was described in the ad. He walked outside and told the German people to go home because the car was sold. I overheard them and they were quite upset understably but I was already playing walking on a dream by Empire of the sun in my head. I had purchased a M3 in Macoa Blue.

I reached out to my local BMW dealer to ask about the engine number, it all checked out matching numbers..

Work started on the engine.

Complete teardown to the last nut and bolt.

Someone already had been in there sadly. I noticed some wrong bolts, and use of aftermarket gaskets.

I also found the culprit of why the engine spun a bearing. Whoever was in here before used some kind of glyco bearing that had the right diameter but did not fit the actual rods. I suspect that they didn’t want to take a loss so they ‘’make’’ them fit.. They grinded the rear of each bearings to fit them. Also the cranck was regrinded before. This together off course is a big no no. 

Luckily with me being in the parts business I had everything in stock to make the engine good again. I used a different set of rods from a good used engine, different cranck from a good used engine (oem spec) and ordered all new parts from BMW for the bottom end including a new set of pistons.

Send of the cylinderhead to my engine guy who checked it over and replaced almost everything. After pressure testing and skimming it was good to go again.

Finished cilinderhead:
Some goes for the bottom end, he advised me to use first oversize pistons from BMW (ouch) have the block skimmed aswell with the timing chain cover and hone the cylinder walls.

Together we assembled the bottom end. Cranck was polished and looked brand new again. Pistons where expenisve but I really wanted to keep the originality and did not want to fit aftermarket parts.

Finished Bottom end:
I sent of all the nuts and bolts to have them zinked yellow again.

For finish I wanted something a little different, we painted every engine part back silver/alluminum color so everything is looking fresh. This will compliment the yellow zinked bolts and make them pop out even more.

Meanwhile with the interior:
We redone some parcel shelfs for customers in the past, often times these become dirty or dull. Spraying them will make them look nice from a distance but nasty up close in my opinion. My girlfriend has a lot of experience with fabric so it was a piece of cake for her to completely recover it and make it nice again.