2270440

Creation date: July 4, 2021
  • Location: United States

Year: 1971
Color: Polaris Metalic (060)
Vehicle Status: In Restoration
Registration Type: Vehicle
Alpina Details: N/A

Buying this car started out with an interesting phone call

Me: "Hello"
Him: "Hi, you don't know me but my name is Gerry"
Me: *thinking I bought my E30 from a Terry so maybe it was him and I misheard"
Me: "Hi Gerry"
Gerry: "I used to own the house you're in"
Me: *Thinking maybe he's asking about mail or buying the property back. Also thinking about how the guy we bought from was a dick throughout the whole buying process and I don't like him*
Gerry: Not the guy before you, but the guy before him
Me: *Oh good*
Gerry: "Anyway I am friends with your neighbor still"
Me: "Oh that's great, she's really nice"
Gerry: "She says you're into old BMWs"
Me: "Yes I am"
Gerry: "Well there was this princess..."
Me: wtf
Gerry: "She had a home in the 70's in upstate New York. She had a BMW that got crashed into. My father in law fixed it to the point where it was primed and ready for paint, but then something happened and it was never finished and ended up in his garage"
Me: "Oh wow"
Gerry: "It's been sitting for at least 30 something years in the garage like that ever since, I was wondering if this would be something you'd be interested in?"

Fast forward a few weeks and here it is.

I got the mostly full back story on the car which is pretty cool. It's a 2800CS bought by Yasmin Khan (Rita Hayworth's daughter, and wife of a Saudi prince) in September 1970, brand new from the first BMW dealer in upstate NY. In June 1971, it was hit by a drunk driver while parked on the street. It was agreed that the the dealership would fix the mechanical and the gentleman I bought the car from would do the body work. Apparently the insurance adjuster was a huge dick and didn't want to pay, so they went to court. At one point the adjuster even blurted out in the court that "These foreign cars don't belong here!" and the judge snapped back "I have a foreign car and I like it very much". So he clearly didn't like BMWs to begin with.
I have a stack of court documents to go through but the gist of it was the mechanical was fixed by the dealer, including rebuilding the engine from the ground up because of concern the crank pully was damaged and there may be more hidden damage, then it was brought for body work where the car was disassembled and the repairs mostly completed before insurance decided to not pay. In the end the car was signed over to him, and he has stored it ever since. So right now it has around 16k miles on it from the few years it was on the road (verified by the court documents), all of the parts to put the body back together in boxes, and I am working on putting it back together.