Is it time to sell the Clown Shoe?

I’ve owned my 1999 BMW M Coupe (a.k.a. “the Clown Shoe”) since 2007. That’s a long time in Hack Mechanic years. I bought it when I was still firmly nestled in the income-generating bosom of my real-world engineering job. At the time, since I still owned my 1982 Porsche 911SC, buying the M Coupe seemed to be the height of frivolity, as on paper, the two cars seemed to be similar (e.g., tiny, fast, iconic, haunched, and craved by men from adolescence through dotage).

In reality, though, the two cars couldn’t be more different. If nothing else, generationally, they’re separated by decades, so much so that when I lost storage and thought I was going to lose my engineering job in 2011 and thus needed to lighten the automotive load, I kept the ’shoe and let go of the 911SC. My triple justification was that a) technology and vibe-wise, the Porsche really wasn’t that different from my 1970s-era BMWs, whereas I owned nothing else remotely like the M Coupe, b) SCs were common commodities, and I thought that if I wanted to buy another one when my financial situation stabilized, it would be easy, and c) the SC’s heads needed to come off to replace the leaky valve guides and seals, and I knew that if I touched the exhaust studs, they’d snap and I’d cry.

Of course, I completely blew it. Within four months of selling the SC, the value of every air-cooled Porsche went nuts. Even though I’ve bought other satisfying cool cars since, selling the 911SC, especially selling it when I did, remains by far my single biggest automotive regret. Even though, as the M Coupe’s stablemate, it’s been gone from the barn for 12 years, it still casts a big shadow, precisely because I’m terrified that if I sell the M Coupe, it’s going to “pull a 911” and soar upward faster than an AI company’s stock price.

A few years ago, I wrote in detail about the Clown Shoe. The 1999–2002 M Coupe (also called the Z3 M Coupe) looked like what it was, which was a skunk-worked design that grafted a shooting brake-style hatchback onto the back of the little Z3 roadster, and outfit it with the engine from the M3, a stiff suspension, fat rubber on staggered wheels, and a cool chrome-gauge-ringed interior. The design may be iconic now, but at the time, it was polarizing, with some reviewers saying that it looked like two different cars grafted together, and it didn’t sell well. Only 2858 M Coupes were built for the U.S. market. That divides into 2180 of the 1999–2000 cars with the 240-horsepower S52 engine from the E36-bodied M3, and just 678 cars with the more ferocious 315-hp S54 engine from the E46 M3. There’s also the non-M Z3 Coupe (2071 built for the U.S.)—a fine car, but lacking the M engine, the staggered alloys, the fat rubber, and the suspension tweaks.

But over time, opinion tilted largely in the Clown Shoe’s favor. Because it’s got that magic combination of a unique look, a great driving experience, a rabid enthusiast base, and low production numbers, the idea that it’s the next big thing seems grounded in reality. A succession of print and web articles have trumpeted the car’s coming appreciation, both aesthetic and monetary, of the car. My very M Coupe and I were even featured in “The BMW Clown Shoe Has No Equal” episode of the show The Next Big Thing with Magnus Walker. And, indeed, some M Coupes have reached truly spectacular values on Bring a Trailer.

However, a rising tide doesn’t really lift all boats, at least not equally. The stratospheric bid-and-buy prices on BaT apply mostly to low-mileage 2001–02 S54 cars with zingy exterior colors and seizure-inducing two-tone interiors. Mine is a driver-quality 105,000-mile S52 car in silver and solid black—the most common of all color combinations. Personally, I think that the silver tones down the car’s extreme lines, and that the solid black interior sets off those chrome trim rings, but the market doesn’t appear to value my aesthetic viewpoint.

The website mcoupebuyersguide.com does a pretty good job of tracking and displaying Clown Shoe sales, and the coattails of the six-figure 10,000-mile S54 BaT cars don’t seem to be dragging up cars like mine. So the car, while collectible, hasn’t reached the point where every example in driver condition is worth crazy money. Which is to say … it’s not a 911SC (mind you, the $20,000–$25,000 that my car is probably worth is nothing to sneeze at.)

Whether you sell a car or other possession or asset is always a judgement involving the gin rummy game of the left-brain issues of whether or not you need the money (and how badly), whether or not the car is appreciating, and the “opportunity cost” of the money, the space, and your time being tied up in it, and the right-brain issues of how much you like it versus how much you want to get into something else. In my case, I’m not hard-up for the money, and I do think that appreciation will carry my car’s value upward, but I could use a little simplification in my life. So, regarding sell-or-hold, it puts me on the fence.

But another issue is that—and I really hate to say this—I’m just not that crazy about driving it. And it has nothing to do with speed or handling. To be clear, the car is like dancing the tango with a supermodel on meth (or so I imagine). The problem is the seats. For some reason, the deeply-bolstered, overly-stiff seats have a long history of angering up my back. It’s weird. I can pound out 500 miles sitting in the vintage Recaros in my 1970s-era BMWs, but I drive the M Coupe for 45 minutes and find myself with low back pain. And the car is too small and the seats too narrow for the usual solution—a TempurPedic back cushion—to be practical or effective.

The seat discomfort issue was recently and viscerally on display. Last week, I wrote about my difficulty in keeping up with the 13 vehicles that I own. I cycled through the five cars I have in the warehouse on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border, and as part of that, drove home in the M Coupe. I stopped first to drop off some parts at a friend’s house in Worcester. Sure enough, the 45-minute drive was enough to make me feel like I’d been leaning against the pointy end of a brick. And this experience was duplicated on the remaining portion of the drive home.

When it’s difficult enough for me to find the time to road-trip the cars that are actual road-trip cars, finding the proper set of circumstances to enjoy a car that I can’t drive for more than 45 minutes at a time is difficult. So no road trips or weekends with my wife in the Clown Shoe. If the sole reasons to own it are to look at its fat, planted rear end and hope for further financial appreciation, are those good enough? Maybe not.

So maybe it’s time for it to go.

But that means preparation. As I wrote in my two-part series on how to sell a car, I typically begin by writing up a warts-and-all list of the car’s needs, then clocking through as much of it as I can on the assumption that it’s always better to fix something than to list it in an ad and apologize for it. On the M Coupe, the top three items on that punch list are ancient tires on curb-rashed and discolored wheels, a scuffed-up front air dam, and a cracked rear taillight. I’ve certainly had the experience of prepping a car to put it up for sale and filing off rough edges that I’ve lived with for years, only to have the exercise reignite my relationship with the car.

We’ll see what happens with the Clown Shoe.

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Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic™: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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