Warehouse of brand new E34s with 0 miles discovered

[CarterH]

Saw this curious news story and thought it was worth sharing on here:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Ffakt i.bg%2Favto%2F352133-u-nas-nameriha-11-chisto-novi-bmw-ta-ot-1994-a

They're all 1994 520s and 525s and will be sold at auction at some point. Anyone want a brand new E34?

[Kavish]

Auction them on Ebay so I can Import one to Mauritius

[ross1]

The missing gas door made me laugh.

[zubbie]

Meh.... 520's an 525's.. not particularly desirable. The amount of work required to get them drivable won't be fun.

I wonder what the back story is. Corrupt communist party official buys them for his private collection? Or is this more fake news....

[tantumaude]

AFAIK a rental car company bought them and went out of business.

[moroza]

Wow. At this point they need full suspension rebuilds and many other rubber parts replaced, but a lot of components should be pristine. I see a black hardtop Touring Stock engines may not be desirable but there's a lot of swap options. The only dealbreaker would be rodent damage, and even that won't stop some people from bringing one back to life.

[de Witt]

The only dealbreaker would be rodent damage

It would be interesting to see the damage to the electrical system, varmint, age or otherwise. Im sure anyone looking for a brain-damage inducing project would not be disappointed in one of these rigs - E34s always deliver in this respect. Still, the end result would be a "0" mileage 525 or 520, big deal.

[ross1]

Not knowing the storage conditions it's impossible to speculate about condition.
Fleet cars so will be strippers, especially over there. Curious to see the selling prices.

[CarterH]

Not knowing the storage conditions it's impossible to speculate about condition.
Fleet cars so will be strippers, especially over there. Curious to see the selling prices.

Well none of them have sunroofs including the estate one, so that's already something worthwhile. The bodies themselves would also have not so much as a stone chip at all, no exposure to UV rays and potentially no rust at all since they've been kept indoors.

If they went for cheap then people could just remove the engines and put something more powerful in them. Less features on the cars also means there's less that is broken.

[JoeyBimX5din]

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

[ross1]

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

Checking the two VINs that could be seen on documents I see both are Spanish versions.
Cars are in Romania? Odd, no?

[JoeyBimX5din]

maybe they were brought in from Spain?

[ross1]

maybe they were brought in from Spain?

Which implies unorthodox purchasing channels.

[katit2]

It may be possible that there was no dealerships in soviet Bulgaria in 1990

[ross1]

Oh yeah, and I would also expect that certain folks needed their palms greased.
The story would be very interesting to know. I'd bet these were hidden rather than stored.
A have a story about how "imported" cars could be registered in east block back in those days; One of my clients in those days was one of the big car rental outfits at O'Hare airport. My contact was the fleet buyer who bought around 4000 cars/year for the fleet. They are also self insured so any stolen are pursued with vigor. They usually turned up in the rougher neighborhoods of Chicago, seldom in good condition.
My buyer got a call from CPD informing them that a stolen one had somehow been located in Russia! Seems a local gangster had acquired the car and it was, according to local authorities, legally registered. It was still wearing the Illinois license plates and Chicago city sticker, apparently a status symbol amongst red gangsters. Supposedly the new "owner" had said something to the effect of "come and get it".

[katit2]

Oh yeah, and I would also expect that certain folks needed their palms greased.
The story would be very interesting to know. I'd bet these were hidden rather than stored.

Who knows. If it was cars for "special" people - they wouldn't be base cars.

[ross1]

Who knows. If it was cars for "special" people - they wouldn't be base cars.

See my edited post above

[katit2]

a stolen one had somehow been located in Russia! Seems a local gangster had acquired the car and it was, according to local authorities, legally registered. It was still wearing the Illinois license plates and Chicago city sticker, apparently a status symbol amongst red gangsters. Supposedly the new "owner" had said something to the effect of "come and get it".

It gets better now in Russia, but there is many other countries where it is real even today.

Stolen cars get second life pretty easy, all VINs get replaced, etc. Did you even hear about matching engine # to VIN here in US? In Russia you can't even register car if VIN not legible and matching engine. And VIN plate will be examined very carefully to make sure it's not welded into other frame.

[moroza]

Supposedly the new "owner" had said something to the effect of "come and get it".

I imagine the case was dropped at that point?

It gets better now in Russia, but there is many other countries where it is real even today.

Stolen cars get second life pretty easy, all VINs get replaced, etc. Did you even hear about matching engine # to VIN here in US? In Russia you can't even register car if VIN not legible and matching engine. And VIN plate will be examined very carefully to make sure it's not welded into other frame.

Nothing a few C-notes can't fix.

Anyone done a lien sale? I did a couple. All US states that I've bothered to check, and I'm sure many other countries, have a similar process. While I did check with police if the vehicles were stolen, and did put bona fide effort into finding the owners, apparently this was not required. The relative ease and modest paperwork burden of that process suggested that it would've been quite possible to get away with a far shadier situation.

[katit2]

Nothing a few C-notes can't fix.

Nope. It's different now. It's not 1990s anymore. Before there was no car insurance industry in Russia. Now it is like here in states. And this simple capitalism item fixed those issues. Now that insurance companies paying - this is who does work finding stolen cars, preventing illegal (bribes) registration and so on. Makes sense, right? Because you can't bribe insurance company, it's a business and they are loosing money.

[ross1]

[QUOTE=moroza;30178610]I imagine the case was dropped at that point?

They knew they it was futile to pursue.

Cars would be rented out with bogus ID etc. and sometimes would be driven as their own until spotted. Typically CPD, who was friendly and knew where to look, would call them and say when they found a missing car and then they would just go fetch it. God knows how this one was located. At least they got an interesting story.