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Car Sales Vehicle Purchase

So finally after months and months of searching I was able to find a pretty decent E46 M3 on CarSales.com.au. It was a nice 2003 Titanium Silver example, originally UK registered and now Personally Imported to Australia so as a result it had a few of the setbacks that come with European cars that have been driven during winter (ie extensive underside rust). There was also no evidence of Vanos or Subframe repairs or failure but I already intended on sorting these out myself. 

It is hard to find a decent 6MT model here in Australia so I jumped in to this one head first and would address any of the missing preventative maintenance or repair work as I go. Here are a set of pictures taken just prior to purchase that I pulled from the CarSales advertisement:












I managed to negotiate to a reasonably agreeable price which I was pretty happy with given the other E46 M3's available on the market and their condition.

The car was very straight, with good service history and was basically stock aside from the AP Racing BBK.


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