Final Parking Space: 1971 BMW 2500

While exploring the car graveyards of the American West, you’re likely to run across a pretty good selection of discarded BMWs from the 1970s and 1980s, with examples of the E21 and E30 3 Series, E12 and E28 5 Series, and E23 7 Series the easiest to find nowadays. Today’s Final Parking Space resident is a much rarer Bavarian machine, found in a Denver yard a few months back.

Although this car was born in the Free State of Bavaria, it isn’t a BMW Bavaria. That name went on later versions of this car sold in the the United States with the bigger 2.8- or 3.0-liter engines.

This car is a member of the E3 family of four-door sedans, which was built from 1968 through 1977 and can be considered the ancestor of the 7 Series. The coupe siblings of the E3 were designated as E9s.

The first E3s appeared in American BMW showrooms as 1968 models, and they were available as the entry-level 2500 and loaded-with-luxury 2800 models. The 2500 was discontinued here after 1971.

American buyers of the 1971 BMW 2500 paid $5753 (about $45,740 in 2024 dollars) for a sophisticated European sedan that weighed about the same as a new Chevy Nova sedan and came with a twin-carbed 2.5-liter SOHC straight-six rated at 148 horsepower.

The Zenith carburetors were still in this car when I found it, though they had been detached from the intake.

This car’s final caretaker was a repair shop owner who wanted it gone a decade after a customer dropped it off and (presumably) never returned. It was available on Facebook Marketplace in Denver with an asking price of $500 for months before taking its final ride behind a U-Pull-&-Pay tow truck.

The Facebook listing photos show a weathered but complete car.

It ran when parked, allegedly, but none among the local E3/E9 aficionados wanted to rescue it.

There’s some rust-through, but nothing too horrible.

Two transmission choices were available in this car: a four-on-the-floor manual and a three-speed automatic.

This car has the manual.

This BMW may have been about the size of a Nova, but its price tag was just a few hundred bucks lower than that of a new 1971 Cadillac Calais sedan. At the same time, the BMW 2500 was nimbler than the similarly priced (and much stodgier) Mercedes-Benz W114 sedans, and quite a bit cheaper than the six-banger W114s to boot.

Not many American car shoppers of the early 1970s understood the appeal of a taut German luxury sedan, but that story would change as the 1980s approached.

In its homeland, this was a fast and roomy car for wealthy, slightly devilish drivers.