Right to walk away???

Another vote for getting a PPI done independent of dealer. If it looks good, buy the car with the Insp II thrown in. 69K is not uncommon for some owner to not do the Insp II and dump it. It is not a big deal. I did my own valve adjustment at about that same mileage last summer and it went great! Inspection II isn't that hard a DIY

Originally Posted by NICKBRUM

Seriously not ever car out there is going to have a full paper trail along with it. That doesn't mean it is a POS.

Couldn't agree more. All I had to go off of was Carfax and my PPI. My M3 didn't have any paperwork of previous maintenance...at all. I took a gamble, but the PPI checked out beautifully and after 3 years of ownership, the only HUGE cost has been the Vanos exhaust hub.

Not that I recommend buying a car with no paper trail, I just found a pretty unique M3 in my area and got a good deal on it to boot!

Originally Posted by Firstboost

Couldn't agree more. All I had to go off of was Carfax and my PPI. My M3 didn't have any paperwork of previous maintenance...at all. I took a gamble, but the PPI checked out beautifully and after 3 years of ownership, the only HUGE cost has been the Vanos exhaust hub.

Not that I recommend buying a car with no paper trail, I just found a pretty unique M3 in my area and got a good deal on it to boot!

+1 i didnt have much paperwork on mine either. the only real problem was at 91K miles with the vanos. but other than that its been running perfect, just do preventative maintenance. little by little start changing stuff out, belts, fluids, bushings, tabs.

Don't put a lot of faith in dealer records. A lot of the time when someone pays the dealer to perform an inspection II, they don't don't adjust the valves and/or do other things called for. I did mine myself because the dealer said they could do it while I waited. Impossible since the valve adjustment has to be done on a cold engine, which would require letting the car sit for several hours beforehand. Only way to know 100% what's been done is to do it yourself. Just some food for thought. If you pay anyone to do an inspection 2, dealer or Indy I'd at least mark the valvecover bolts to make sure it was removed.

Originally Posted by Alan

I'm missing specifically why you walked away from the car. No-one is going to do a major Inspection on a car when you are making zero commitment to it. They said they would do the Inspection if you bought it. Thats reasonable. Just get an independent PPI, then agree to buy contingent upon the Inspection being done before delivery.

Re: no records after 39K miles - that means it was done at indy shops - which is probably true of >95% of cars that old. Short of finding a single owner car (probably about 1% of M3s out there now) - I'm not sure how you plan to improve upon that.

So you're making the assumption that the car was well maintained? You would buy an m3 with only 39k worth of service history? It's an m3 pal, you can't go assuming the car is well taken care of. In case you missed it, they're powerful cars that often are abused; specifically why you would want to know more about it. It doesn't bother you that you'll only know what the car's been through half it's life? You sure are something. Good thing op walked away.

Originally Posted by Nemesis251

No as in they didn't know if it was done. The manager claimed the car was checked out by his service dept but could not say it has been done. Shouldn't that be tracked with the VIN once its done by a BMW dealer?

Originally Posted by Steezy

It can be tracked by VIN, ONLY if it was done by a BMW dealer. If it was done by an INDY shop, you can't track it.

The only way of knowing is getting back to the previous owner(s). Don't fall into the dealer's BS ...

This is so true...

Originally Posted by NICKBRUM

Seriously not ever car out there is going to have a full paper trail along with it. That doesn't mean it is a POS. If you could make the purchase contingent on completion of inspection 2 I don't see a problem, especially if you negotiated a price your happy with.

This is what I would do. Reality is that the majority of cars out there won't have records or paper receipts....only from a true enthusiast will you have this...