E38 B12s - how many?

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ali
ALPINA
ALPINA
Posts: 2401
Joined: Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:40 am
Location: Edinburgh

Re: B12

Post by ali » Mon Oct 30, 2017 9:59 pm

Mike Pitt wrote:
This is almost certainly the best SWB RHD, so if someone wants the best.....
Depends how well the jig work was done and who carried out the rebuild and to what standard.
No one has seen it since "that" incident in 2010
B3 3.3 Coupe #090
D3 2.0 Biturbo Touring #098

Jongs
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:47 pm
Location: Cambridge

Post by Jongs » Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:11 pm

My father and I have one of the 6 RHD cars in our collection (our 3rd B12 6.0) - Frank Sytners old car which had the square number plate holders. I have changed them back to the 'proper' UK oblong mounts and the car has been in my car storage facility for the last 3-4 years as life has got in the way of regularly using the toys... It is actually going into my workshop in the next couple of weeks for light re-commissioning and will hit the road again in spring. Gee has my father's old RHD B12 6.0 (via an owner in between) As mentioned earlier here they are very reliable cars and since the recommended engine oil was revised to 10W60 the engines just keep on going. The LHD example that we owned (https://www.pistonheads.com/regulars/ph ... tted/27807 - Pistonheads grabbed the advert when I sold it....) has now made it's way to Moscow and has just had a 50k Euro restoration carried out (it now has around 150k miles on it now and we are in contact with the owner) It was purchased from us by a Gerogian a number of years ago when it had covered 90k odd miles and wasn't well looked after by him and it was rescued by the current owner at the start of this year - here it is after all the work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w499cJottc0

He is now starting phase 2 of his restoration and is planning on having an engine and gearbox rebuild/overhaul carried out this winter. He purchased the car this year for £23k and has already spent 40k Euros on full bare metal respray/tyres/leather resto etc and will likely spend another 15-20k Euros on engine/box so the car will owe him around £75k by the end... perhaps an indication of where good examples are going. However, I would say that in my opinion the Estorial car is vastly overpriced given it's previous history.

These E38 Alpinas are very special and have quietly been creeping up in value. Subjective I know but they look superb and also had the highest list price of any BMW until very recently (other than the B12 E31 5.7) and thus are very scarce. We have covered about 150k miles in total in the three we have owned and other than general bits and bobs (and an engine rebuild on Gees's car due to the wrong oil being specified but that was paid for by BMW warranty) they are cheap to run and reliable. Having my own workshop does help admittedly...

We also have a manual E32 B11 among our other Alpinas which again has been enjoying some rest and will hopefully be coming out of hibernation in the spring (work move, house move and garage building have all got in the way!)

We keep the cars running and they are regularly run to temperature and moved around my storage facility.. The 7 series Alpinas are rather special. and are very few and far between - good luck finding one!
B12, B11, B8, B10BT, misc. bmws

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