|
After a long year with Ferrari I moved to the Distinctive Collection; a Bentley, Aston Martin and Spyker dealer. I was working a deal with a guy from Victoria who had about 20 cars and seemingly rotated about half of them every month. He wanted an Aston DBS, and gave me a list of about 6 cars that could work as trade ins. Everything from Toyota Land Cruisers, some air-cooled Porsches, a Ferrari Dino, and I forget what all else. At the time he wanted $80k for a 1994 Porsche Turbo 3.6, which I thought was crazy, but then they rocketed up in price to $250k. Dinos went from $150k to over $400k... Who knew?
He had a Ruf Turbo, which he described as a ‘Monster’. DC didn’t want any of the cars at the prices he was asking, so I agreed to buy the RUF sight unseen for myself to keep the deal together. I knew little about it, but it sounded cheap at $30,000, and I made $5k for selling the DBS so I figured I couldn’t lose. It was black on black with boxed rocker panels and side fender vents and RUF wheels - it looked menacing and fantastic. There was a guy at Porsche Vancouver who used to work on the 944 Turbo Cup racing cars who knew what the car was and had a look at it for me. He found a few small things which he agreed to fix before I flew in and drove the car back to Calgary. He said the gearbox alone was worth $20k.
I’d never driven a Porsche Turbo before, though I had read about them almost my entire life. I had been selling 500hp and 600hp Ferraris, Bentleys and Aston Martins, so I’d driven some fast cars, but I really didn’t know what to expect.
The RUF certainly wasn’t a very happy car - at least in Vancouver traffic. The clutch was extremely stiff, the 5 speed dog-leg Ruf gearbox was noisy in first gear and the engine was pretty grumpy under 3,000rpm. The Porsche dealer was in downtown Vancouver, so I had a long way to go in rush hour traffic before I could open it up. I was thinking, “Hmm, what have I done here?”
Eventually I hit my first on-ramp to get on the highway, and opened it up. Not much for a second or so, then holy #@$% is this thing fast!! I mean it made a Ferrari 430 Scuderia seem tame. I don’t know what the revs were because I was to scared to look down! A look at the tell-tale on the boost gauge showed it had hit 1.7 bar of boost - almost pegged. I figured this just couldn’t be right. I didn’t know what boost the car should be running, but I couldn’t believe that the mechanical components could be expected to survive that level of brutality for long.
So I tried to take it easy. I figured that if I could keep the boost down in the 1.2bar range, roughly half what was on the gauge, the car would probably be OK. It was still incredibly fast. I took the #3 highway through the Crowsnest Pass to make my way back to Calgary. I would pull out to pass a car, and by the time I was alongside I had doubled the speed limit. I could - and did - pass cars like they were bicycles. Somehow I made it back to Calgary without getting pulled over but my nerves were totally shot. I pulled the car into the garage, shut it off, and was glad to get out of it. A huge cloud of smoke started to fill the garage and I thought I melted the engine.
The smoke turned out to be from a valve cover gasket that was leaking oil on the exhaust manifold, so that was easily solved. The boost issue was from the cast iron wastegate which had rusted itself shut. My guess at 1.2 bar was still high - 1.0 bar was a safe limit for the car. The engine turned out to be in perfect health which is a testament to the thorough engineering done by both Porsche and RUF - a similar car to the RUF BTR had actually placed 13th overall at Le Mans in 1983. The gearbox needed to be rebuilt though and that and some other work meant that I was into the car for about $45k when I was done, which was still a spectacular bargain considering the performance and condition. I thoroughly enjoyed the car for about a year and then sold it to a guy in the Netherlands. I missed that car and recently put an old photo of it up on Facebook, saying that I wished I had it back. The owner replied - I forgot he was a Facebook friend! He said I could have it back at today's valuation which was triple of what I sold it to him for...
The next car to come along was an Alpina BMW. It was owned by a friend of my mothers who I would see from time to time socially. He told me he had this rare Alpina and that it was for sale and I should have a look at it. He was looking for about $20,000 for it and placed it on consignment at a used car lot owned by a friend of his.
I went to look at it and it was at one of these places that offers ‘credit rebuilding’. They tied some balloons to it and parked it in a corner of the lot. When I got there the car was a mess. The balloons were deflated, the hood was propped open and there were disconnected cables in the footwell. There was also a large amount of mouse poop all over the seats, console and carpets. The mice had half-eaten all the service records which were in the glove compartment. There was another nest in the trunk. The car had a dead battery, and even when boosted wouldn’t fire up.
The badge on the back said Alpina B7S Turbo, which was the Alpina model based on the first (E24) BMW 6-Series bodyshell with a turbocharged 3.3L engine that made 330hp - an impressive number for the day. The Alpinas were the fastest sedans and coupes in the world in the early-mid 1980’s, good for about 160mph. They only made 30 B7S Turbo Coupes and 60 B7S Turbo Sedans, making them the rarest and most powerful of the classic Alpina BMW’s. They were all identically specified, with the coupes all being dark Alpina green with green tartan Scheel seats and the Sedans dark blue with blue tartan seats. They used an early version of a digital spark control, and a Pierburg fuel injection system that was unique to perhaps 500 cars. According to the forums there was only one guy in Germany who was familiar with these systems and worked on them. There were no spare parts.
This car didn’t have any documentation from Alpina, and what it did have for other records were half eaten by the mice. There were no Alpina build plaques which should have been in the engine bay and on the centre console. The car was missing its spoilers and unique Alpina ‘Deco’ striping which was made to resemble circuits on a computer chip - Tron style. It had Recaro seats instead of the Scheel seats that the cars were supposed to come with. And, it didn’t have a trunk mounted auxiliary fuel tank that the car needed as the turbo motor was much thirstier then the 218hp straight six that the 635CSI came with.
So I went back to the owner and told him that mice had been in the car, and that it didn’t start, and there was no easy way to fix the Pierburg injection, and that without documentation I couldn’t be sure it was a factory B7S or just a copy of one, and that all I could pay was $2,500. Reluctantly he accepted and said that’s what happens when you just don’t have any time to deal with things.
So I got to work on this car. Cleaning out the mice wasn’t pleasant but I got a mask, gloves and a lot of disinfectant and went to work. My big fear about the Pierburg injection system was unfounded as all I needed to do was figure out where the cabling was supposed to go, re-attach it, and it started. The first drive revealed something very wrong with the handling, but this was because a few tires were at 65psi and others at 15psi! When they all were adjusted to 30psi it handled fine.
I did find a major problem with the body though. At some point in the cars history a massive sound system was installed, probably in the mid 80’s, as was the custom then. In this case, a previous owner cut a huge hole the rear structural bulkhead to install the subwoofer. This was not an easy fix as the bulkhead was part of the monocoque and was made from sandwiched steel pressings spot welded together. Fortunately I shared a shop with a talented panel beater who used to work for RM restorations in Ontario. We found a E12 6 Series shell at a wrecker, got them to cut out the rear bulkhead and sell it to us. We drilled out all the spot welds, separated it into pieces, and re-welded both pieces back in place. It was a great piece of restoration work.
The car needed cosmetics, so I went to the BMW dealer and ordered all the exterior lights, trim and rubber pieces. After some searching I found the replacement Alpina front and rear spoilers that the car was missing. I found an alloy auxiliary fuel tank on eBay. Some guy in New Zealand was reproducing the Alpina ‘Deco’ graphics which I bought. Walter at Continental Auto Body, since retired, was trusted to repaint the car in Alpina Green. I spent about $35,000 not including the car to give it the restoration it deserved.
Correspondence with Alpina revealed the car was real. Alpina bought the last 30 E12 coupe bodies and 60 sedan bodies from BMW and used them to make the batches of B7S Turbos. They all have sequential serial numbers so you can tell if the car is real right from the VIN. I got Alpina to send me a letter authenticating the car. The car must have lost its Alpina VIN plates during its grey market importation - they were never sold in North America. Not only that, but my car was the only one to be equipped with Recaro seats, which were the ‘Ortho C Idealseats’ and $2k a piece in the early 1980’s. I had a Blaupunkt Berlin stereo - the one with the controls on a separate movable wand - which was a great addition as the Berlin and the Recaros were found on just about every German tuner car from the 1980’s.
At the end of the day, I had freshly serviced, cosmetically restored, now fully documented Alpina B7S Turbo Coupe - the rarest and most desirable of all the 1980’s BMW’s, save the M1. I wrote a long description of it, put it on eBay, and somebody sent a link to an enthusiast email list called Bring A Trailer, which is the first time I think I had heard of the site - this well before they started auctioning cars. (click here for the BAT listing)
The car sold for $46k at a time when the Canadian dollar was at par with the USD, and I figured I was a car restoring genius for making a little over $10k. I was able to visit it during the Monterey Car Week at Legends Of The Autobahn, where it was displayed with one of its sister cars - the only 2 of the 30 produced that were in North America. After Alpina was purchased by BMW, a B7S Turbo Coupe was front and centre at the BMW stand at the Geneva Auto Show.
All classic cars have gone up dramatically in the last 10 years, but the 80’s tuner cars from Alpina, AMG and RUF have really boomed. There is a B7S Turbo coupe on-line now for sale that the dealer is asking $USD 300,000 for...
I got lucky on the Alpina that it didn’t need any mechanical work. This side-hustle was proving quite fun and I was driving some pretty cool cars and they weren't costing me anything. Next I bought another RUF Porsche with some issues and I wasn’t so lucky... The subject of next week’s column, so stay tuned.
| 
