My 1988 BMW 735i: The Car That Came Back When I Needed It Most

Most of us never see our old cars again after watching them disappear down the road with their new owners. Every once in a while, though, fate offers a second chance. Four years after selling my 1988 BMW 735i, I stumbled across it for sale while helping my father look for a truck. I couldn’t resist bringing it home, unaware that the car would once again become part of one of the most important chapters of my life.

While searching for a suitable truck for my father back in 2017, I stumbled across a familiar face. There, for the piddling sum of $1000 was my 1988 BMW 735i, which had been sold off four years prior in 2013. I called the seller and confirmed it was my car, and the next day, after my shift at Smiths, my friend C and I loaded up the “Taco Express” and retrieved the 735i. It was in worse condition than I had left it. My father looked it over, not apparently happy to see it again, grunted, and then it went to its next storage spot: my deceased grandmother’s house, where my brother was serving as caretaker. He looked it over and was quite disturbed at its condition. Given the clunkers he had owned, that was a very concerning statement.

We set about fixing it. We found a blown fuse and replaced it. This caused a fire. It turned out that the last owner had dropped a bolt between the flashlight charger contacts in the glove box, and once a new fuse was installed, the circuit completed and the wiring caught fire. My brother cut the afflicted wiring out, and we called it good. We changed worn out tie rods, replaced the now-missing centering rings for the wheels, and got the car realigned. That did much to fix it, but the electrical gremlins that had caused me so much frustration in high school were still there. My brother, however, had sobered up and was far more willing to tackle the gremlins than my father and I had been. Most of them were solder joints that had long-since failed. We began the arduous process of pulling electrical components, putting them under a microscope and resoldering them. The gremlins were quickly eliminated. In fact, in a strange twist, when I left for UNM in August of 2017, I did so in the 735i.

I do not remember my time at UNM particularly fondly. This is because, for a span of about five years, my life mostly sucked. As I have alluded to previously, I had a dead-end job with no meaningful prospects; a useless degree that would get me nowhere; a bedroom in my parents’ basement; and the highlight of my weeks would be the occasional trip with my friend in his crappy minivan to buy fast food. This was not a good life. It was barely a life. I felt more like a ghost. Going to law school was an incremental improvement. I was no longer in my parents’ basement, and I at least had an excuse for my lack of respectability. But UNM was in Albuquerque, a city I loathed and still loathe, and I would be living in student housing on Central Avenue, which was not a great place to be. My first day at UNM was spent unloading the 735i and getting my ID and keys. I met my new roommate, a German man who was unimpressed with the quality of UNM’s housing. He was right, and we bonded over how much we hated it. The 735i surprised him–he had never seen anything so derelict on the roads in Germany. The 735i stayed with me for about a month before the cooling system checked out, albeit with plenty of warning so I could get it home to Los Alamos. It stayed home until my 2L year.

When I came home for the weekends and breaks, I turned my attention to the 735i. It was a respite from the strain of law school. For about six months, the 735i sat unused, with the cooling system being totally replaced, followed by the fuel injectors, crankshaft position sensor, and a whole bunch of other parts that I changed while I was doing one job or another. Just before my 2L year, the 735i had been restored to service, and it came with me back to UNM, staying with me until my 3L year. My 2L year brought with it personal success. I had gotten the hang of law school, and my ex-girlfriend and I had started talking again. This was due in part to her frustration with her abusive husband, who she would leave not long thereafter.

At the end of my 2L year, the 735i developed an elusive vacuum leak, and I gave up. I spent most of my summer break trying to find that leak, and when I could not find it, I brought my 2002 BMW Z3 with me for my last year. I would continue to chase these issues when I was home, and the 735i became my “around town” car for a time. On New Year’s Eve, 2019, the 735i brought L to her final appointment in Los Alamos, and I made what was supposed to be my final goodbye to her. She left the State the next day, fleeing her husband. The drive home from that goodbye was short and quiet, with the only sound being the valve clatter of the tired old M30B35. I parked the 735i and prepared it for storage. A few days later, I left for UNM. It would be a short semester.

My second semester of my 3L year fell in 2020. Two months into the semester, we were sent home following the news that COVID-19 had hit New Mexico. We were first told that we would be back in three weeks. Then I was told we weren’t coming back at all. I loaded up my apartment one day, in a rush, and came home. We were to attend class remotely for the rest of the year. This gave me plenty of time to fix the 735i, and do, well, anything. By the time I had graduated, the 735i was running well and I had two perfectly functioning cars again but nowhere to be.

Thankfully, soon that changed. L had returned to New Mexico to be closer to her children. She needed a lot of help. While we had met in driver’s ed, she had not actually finished the class. In fact, she did not get her driver’s license in the 10 years or so that had followed our first meeting. Her ex-husband had never allowed her to learn to drive, and so it fell to me to teach her. As I had once learned in the 735i, so did she. Soon, we rekindled our relationship, and the pandemic did not feel so bad anymore.

In 2021, I began work as an attorney for a small firm in town. With this work came money and thus improvements to the 735i. I installed a Mass Air Flow sensor in place of the volume air flow sensor, making the 735i marginally better. When it became clear at the end of 2021 that I would be routinely bringing L and her children places, I made the decision to rebuild the suspension, which by this point had started sagging badly. Unfortunately, this was the end of the 735i. While working under it, I discovered a large amount of rust. The 735i had originally come from Illinois, where it had lived a hard life. Parts were damaged and could not be readily replaced. The struts had rusted themselves together, such that I could not replace the inserts. After a year of difficult work, I pronounced the 735i dead. I called a tow truck and it was brought to Capital Scrap in Santa Fe, and set about getting its replacement–the biggest mistake of my life.

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