The 1980s E28 5-Series is BMW’s greatest-ever sedan, one of the last deals left in vintage BMWs. This one gets a gorgeous once-over for pennies.
YouTube
Jul 14, 2024 at 3:00pm ET
If you’ve tracked vintage car prices over the past decade, you’ve seen the market for everything from snail-like Citroens to collector-grade Porsches explode, moving from affordable Craigslist curiosities to “collector-grade investments.”
It’s a damned shame. Because the collector angle keeps prices ballooning, which in turn keeps everyman enthusiasts from buying into the hobby/lifestyle/sickness that is owning old and interesting cars.
Thankfully, there are still a few cool old cars out there for reasonable(ish) money. One of those, the BMW 5-Series (called E28 in Bimmerdork nomenclature) built from roughly 1981 through 1988, is arguably the greatest BMW sedan of all time. It handles like a stretched-out sports car, is comfy as an S-Class, features God’s Own seating position, and doesn’t weigh more than a dying sun, which you couldn’t say of the brand-new hybrid M5.
While the new 2025 5-Series is great (check out our fresh review here), those special qualities put the E28 in the conversation for Greatest Sedan of All Time.
Mike Burroughs, who runs the Stanceworks YouTube channel, has been a proponent of the E28 chassis since forever, building up several icons of the vintage BMW revival that took off in the mid-2000s.
Look into that on the Stanceworks site, if you’re so inclined, or take a look at this video.
During this latest update, Mike helps his channel’s video man build up an E28 on a relatively modest budget. It’ll stoke some wrenching nostalgia for many of you, as all the best build videos do, and should send many of you to the mye28.com classifieds, looking for that perfect budget 5er. Remember: old Bimmers are best with more than a little fraying at the edges.
Happy hunting!
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