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Most E36 M3 sedans you see for sale are leather, sunroof and a pile of options. This 1998 BMW M3 sedan on Bring a Trailer went the other way: no sunroof, a five-speed manual, and Anthracite M-Cross cloth with Amaretta in place of leather. The bidding sits at $20,000 and the auction ends Thursday, November 5, at 2:23 p.m. ET.
The Spec That Makes It
The car left the factory in Titanium Silver Metallic and was ordered without a sunroof, which gives it the "slicktop" roofline enthusiasts hunt for. Inside are front sport seats and a rear bench in M-Cross cloth and Amaretta, a combination that had Bring a Trailer commenters calling it unusual. A five-speed manual and a limited-slip differential handle the driving, and the car rides on staggered 17-inch Style 39 wheels.
The engine is the 3.2-liter S52 inline-six, rated at roughly 240 horsepower. BMW Group Classic lists the US-market sedan as built from January 1996 to May 1998, with 8,610 sold here and about 47 percent of them automatics. That puts manual sedans at roughly 4,500 cars, according to published production figures. None of the numbers we found break out sunroof deletes or cloth interiors, so the combination is rarer than the sedan's total, but no one has published by how much.
What the Seller Has Done
This is the same car that sold on BaT in December 2024 for $32,000. Since then the seller reports more than $25,000 of work, including a repaint, new brakes and suspension components, Bilstein shocks, Michelin Pilot Sport tires, and an Alcantara headliner. The car has 115,000 miles, a clean Carfax, a clean California title and 21 service records.
The Catches
The listing is upfront about a few problems. The airbag light is on because of a faulty passenger seatbelt switch, the onboard computer shows an intermittent "check coolant level" message, and the left rear door lock works only some of the time. There is also just one key, and it is not a fob. At $20,000 the bid is well under what the same car brought last year, though the reserve status and final price are anyone's guess.
Why It Belongs on Your Watchlist
Spec-driven stories like this one are our favorite kind of auction find. The same logic made the factory-supercharged F-Code Thunderbird with a three-speed and the Prelude Si with mechanical four-wheel steering worth a look. If you want to see how far a German sedan can wander from the usual recipe, our write-up of the supercharged Alpina B7 makes a good companion piece.
The full listing, with photos, videos and the Carfax report, is on Bring a Trailer.
