Junkyard Find: 1974 BMW 2002
I see a fair number of BMW 2002s during my trips to wrecking yards, but for some reason I’ve been hoarding the photos of the few that I photograph. We’ve seen this ’73, this ’73, and today’s ’74. I found this car in a Denver self-serve yard about four months back, which means it has been fed to The Crusher by now. Just as well— this car had some scary, Minnesota-grade rust.
When you see this on the fenders, you know the important structural unibody components probably aren’t so safe.
Still, this car was visiting Colorado state parks as recently as 2006.
Thanks to all the E21 320i s in wrecking yards, there’s not much demand for used M10 engine s. This one probably went to The Crusher along with the rest of the car.
Someone had already grabbed the instrument cluster by the time I got to this car.
Plenty of Bondo to be seen.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I weep for every 2002 I see in this condition. I owned a 1974 in Baikal Blue (actually sold away a 1991 Sentra SE-R to clear the deck to get the 2002). Of the (over) 2 dozen cars I've owned, the '02 is still the ONLY car I truly miss. Yes, it's a brick on wheels, but for those of us that love them, they are OUR bricks on wheels!
Just checking TTAC after about a week, and I hope Murilee's not trying to tell me something, since this is two JFs in a row that are very close to cars in my current mini-fleet. I've got an 84 K car and a 73 2002tii. Maybe I should be feeling cold up and down my spine or drivetrain or something about now.