{"id":34054,"date":"2022-10-19T09:03:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T13:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=34054"},"modified":"2022-10-19T09:03:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T13:03:57","slug":"junkyard-gem-2001-bmw-530i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=34054","title":{"rendered":"Junkyard Gem: 2001 BMW 530i"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Junkyard Gems series<\/a> got a little heavy on machinery from 1970s Detroit<\/a> and 1980s Japan<\/a> in recent years, so I made an effort to document more discarded European cars of the current century. I wanted to write about the BMW<\/a> E39 5-Series and shared a crashed lurid-pink-and-pungent-blue 528i with an automatic transmission<\/a> last year, but it seemed only fair to find a nicer E39 with the larger straight-six and the correct number of pedals. Here is such a car: a 2001 BMW 530i<\/a> in more recognizable condition, found in a Colorado self-service yard<\/a> recently.<\/p>\n

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A crash ended its driving career, hard enough to fire the driver-side airbag<\/a> but gentle enough to spare most of the body panels.<\/p>\n

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In 2001, Americans could get a new 5-Series as a four-door sedan or as a station wagon. There were four engine choices, starting with the 2.5-liter I6 with 184 horsepower in the 525i and working all the way up to the monstrous 394-horsepower V8 in the M5<\/a>. The 530i got a 3.0-liter I6 and the 540i had a 4.4-liter V8.<\/p>\n

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While you could get the 525i and 540i in longroof form, the 530i was sedan-only on our shores (Europeans could buy a 530i wagon that year).<\/p>\n

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This engine made 225 horsepower, quite a leap over the 193 horses in the 2000 528i that this car replaced.<\/p>\n

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While the overwhelming majority of American BMW buyers were insisting on automatic transmissions by the dawn of our current century, this car has the base five-speed manual. If you wanted a six<\/em>-speed manual in a 2001 BMW, you had to spend $69,400 for the M5 (about $117,425 in 2022 dollars). The five-speed automatic with Steptronic shifting added $1,275 ($2,155 today) to the price of the 530i.<\/p>\n

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The E39 got a facelift for 2001, though it wasn’t a radical change from the year before.<\/p>\n

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The MSRP on this car was $39,400, which comes to about $66,666 after inflation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The interior in this car looks to have been in decent shape before the crash, but 20 years of depreciation<\/a> and a type of transmission most Americans can’t or won’t drive meant that the body damage and popped airbag weren’t worth fixing.<\/p>\n