: No flame taken! I agree, market and "book" values on these cars can vary greatly. What I was really trying to show was that if the car is in decent shape, and the partial records are for the most recent scheduled maintenance, a price of 15K or 16K is pretty darn good. Heck, I would think of buying one at that price just for the savings on used parts alone. Just imagine what the individual parts on a total car "bin" would cost!

: Jim Surdick
: '92 Laguna Green 850i 6pd
: BMWCCA#148638

: : Not to flame Jim for his method of determinging 850 values, but also consider checking actual asking prices on autotrader.com, yahoo.com and excite.com classifieds to see what 850's with similar year/mileage and "described" condition are going for. Obviously you should be suspicious if the dealer is selling at below what you are finding for equivalent cars in your area.

: : As a note, two things seem to make the early 850's pricing a bit volatile (from $15k to $35k)as compared to listed Book Values:

: : (1) Service--they are very sensitive to skipping service due to complicated systems and the expense in correcting for skipped service.
: : (2) Production Volume--very few were built. As a result, not many turn over compared to for instance Honda Preludes. Without as many data points, the population can become skewed, as it seems to be toward the low end. Another good example of this is the 1988 M5 which Books for about $9.5k but everyone is currently complaining about not being able to find good ones for less than $15k. Several past messages have been posted by people complaining that they have encountered similar $20-$25k 850 "bargains" that turned out to be expensive fixer-uppers when checked out.

: : Greg Kovecses

: : 1991 850 6spd (link below)
: : 1988 M5