by Pretchi January 10, 2022, 2:02 am inUncategorized

The 1984 Car So Rare ONLY BMW Diehards Know About It

Do you know? The first BMW produced was called the Dixi, which was a licensed version of the British Austin 7.

Tracing history, BMW’s list of car models is extensive and goes all the way back to the 1920s. Through the late ’70s, ’80, and all the way through the ’90s, BMW was a performance car juggernaut. Unfortunately, BMWs introduced after 2000 just haven’t been quite as good.

BMW cars really were the ultimate driving machines, built more respectable performance cars through the 1980s and 1990s than BMW did.

Now, you can rarely find the 1984 BMW E30 Alpina C1 2.3. It might look like an ordinary BMW but it’s a rare thing to find in the United States. In fact, it’s rare to see one anywhere, even in Germany.

Recently, The Wallstreet Journal published an article titled, “The 1984 Car So Rare Only BMW Diehards Know About It” wherein a North Carolina car lover found his E30 Alpina C1 2.3 by chance, and it’s one of 35 built between 1983 and 1985.

Excerpt from The Wallstreet Journal’s article about a rare 1984 BMW car:

Monty King, 69, a retired special projects coordinator at RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. living in Winston-Salem, NC, on his 1984 BMW E30 Alpina C1 2.3, as AJ Baime put it.

One day six years ago a friend and I went to a race at the Virginia International Raceway and I noticed this BMW Alpina there.

This car had a note with the owner’s phone number. So I called him and said, “Listen, I’m interested in buying this car. He told me he left a map on the car in case anyone wanted to talk about it, because it was so rare. The car was not for sale. “Give me your name and number,” he said, “and if I ever want to sell it, I’ll call you. So I did. This guy said, “Are you Monty King?” We went to college together!

In a very strange coincidence, the owner of the rare 1984 BMW E30 Alpina is someone he knows from college.

The coincidence was strange. We had gone to school together at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. Two years later he was ready to sell. He called me and I bought the Alpina over the phone. Surprisingly, it didn’t cost much more than a new BMW 3 Series would have cost back then.

But how rare this car is?

Let me explain what this car is. Alpina was founded in Germany in the 1960s. [It began when a tinkerer named Burkard Bovensiepen developed a new BMW carburetor in his family’s typewriter factory in 1962.] He began to transform BMW cars into motorsport and high performance models with the blessing of BMW itself. Alpina has been doing this ever since, in very small numbers, even to this day. BMW Alpina has built a huge racing heritage over the decades and a cult following for customer cars.

The 1984 Alpina that I own is exceptionally rare. Only 35 examples of this model were built between 1983 and 1985. To my knowledge, only two came to America, brought in by the military who discovered them while stationed overseas. From what I’ve been told, there is one on the west coast and one on the east coast, mine.