Faults:

Two weeks after buying the car the mechanism supporting the window broke.

Another week later the windshield wiper motor broke.

Those two things cost $1500 to repair.

The dynamo created a bad sound when idling one month later.

Finally, the fuel pump broke in the middle of a busy road, and the car had to be picked up by a flatbed truck. The car is now sold.

General Comments:

Fantastic car when it works, which is rare. Should have had a little more low end power.

Faults:

No problems except the engine that operates the electric window on the front left side disconnected itself from the thing that holds the window... love it! Gives me a couple of days of work. I highly recommend a Haynes repair manual if you own a e36.

General Comments:

Beautifully looking, good performance, not excellent on gas, but not bad either, holds together very well after 12 years.

Faults:

Here is the problems when I bought the car; The button of the shift knob was broken. The LED of the driver's power window switch is dead. The muffler needed to be replaced. The hood emblem was damaged (dings, nicks etc.).

The things I'll take care within this month are; The door panels have slight peel in leather surface. The power steering is somehow a bit hard than I expect from a BMW..

General Comments:

I used have US Sport Coupe's (Firebird, Camaro) before the BMW. Also I have owned some Fiat's, Renault's and Honda.

The material and workmanship is plain perfect for a 12 years old car.. The dashboard is quite nice to look at.. The leather seats are perfect in quality and comfortable enough for me.. The stereo system is a joke..

The performance is fine for a heavy car like that.. The engine is quite even at high RPMs.. Also I liked the sound of the straight six.. But still V8 sounds better :) )

Overall it's a very decent and classy car for it's price.. Hi-End German cars have a good reputation in Turkey (like elsewhere) so even you drive an old one, you drive a BMW..

Faults:

- Had to replace my WHOLE transmission and the clutch 6 months after I bought the car. Paid US$ 3000. The gear got stuck at 2nd while I was driving home, then I had to drive to the shop with 2nd gear all the way.

- ABS light appears most of the time, but don't know why it turns off sometimes.

- Still have to replace the valve cover gasket, because oil is leaking into the sparkplug holes. (found out while changing sparkplugs)

- Had to replace the factory alarm with the Clifford one, because the factory one drives me crazy.

- The rear plastic window on my convertible was totally "burned out", couldn't see anything, had to replace it. ($200 by myself)

- AND THEN after the plastic window was replaced, I realized that I have to change my whole convertible top, because the new window stretched so hard that the sewn part of the old top almost totally ripped open.

- The center fan vent is extremely hard to take out, I realized this after I accidently pour juice in there and tried to remove it to wash. Then I looked online and found out that I have to take out the whole stereo deck to do this. So I gave up on it and my car smells like orange now.

General Comments:

- If your convertible is getting old and the rear window is getting blurry or "burned", I suggest changing the whole cloth top instead of only changing the rear plastic window. I learned my lesson because the old cloth was too weak to hold the new plastic window.

- However, I really like the onboard computer that tells you everything that's happening to the car without having you to check thoroughly. The seats are fairly comfortable, but I expected a little more for a BMW.

- Handling is perfect, one of the best-handling car I've ever owned. German auto engineering is amazing. I drove my dad's 5 series, it handles just as good also. Totally different from driving any Japanese cars (don't take this offensively).

- Driving this car is very fun, girls check you out, guys get jealous. But you really need to spend time and money when things go wrong.