Met the guy, drove the car, took pics. Here are all the pics. There are 51 and I have not posted all of them.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!An5lt1BKvFKdqe5x9Z4 ... A?e=xiU3eN
Background:
He owns a Goodyear shop somewhere. According to him he's basically kept up with maintenance. Sounded like all fluids but brake fluid. Has had a couple wheel bearings. Exhaust. All the stuff I expected. Wants to get something to tow his boat next. He bought it around 17k off lease so should be the second owner. I will probably get a Carfax to check this stuff out. All good stuff so far.
He actually said "I'm going to walk into Kohls, go to the bathroom and come back but you can just go do whatever." I stayed and looked at stuff until he came back.
Basic walkaround:
Some headlight oxidation. Rust on the driver's side rear wheel well. A dent in the driver's front fender. A big scrape in the paint on the hood. A small dent on the rear bumper. Signs the car was used and not like babied. Probably par for the course so I'd call it "average" condition or maybe a touch below. Definitely other scratches as well. It's a "get in and drive" and not obsess over. Though I always prefer buying cleaner examples. Looks nicer while I own it and chances are will look nicer when I sell. Win win. Matching set of tires. Continental DWS06, same as what I have on the STS. A performance all season. Or high performance in Tirerack parlance. As a 20 foot car it's fine.
Engine bay was dusty which means not meticulously detailed. Kind of as expected. Saw nothing amiss. Oil level was perfect and looked clean. Brake fluid looked good. Power steering also fine. Coolant fine. So all good there.
Scanned it for codes. No codes, no pending codes, all OBD systems ready. In fact I think it had a been tens of thousands of miles since last reset, which was probably a battery. This is the kind of commodity performance I'm looking for. O2 trims looked perfect.
One comment: the driver's door seemed a little saggy at the hinges and closed a little harder than I expected.
Then he basically sat in the shade while I test drove it. Will cover that next.
The drive:
This is pretty easy. I like the way it drives. The engine is strong and winds out all the way to like 7,200. It gets a little buzzy up there but I don't see anything wrong with that. Pulls strong and linearly. The steering was actually really good. Good ratio, good feel, very tight and precise. It actually had some feel when I pushed it in a corner. I found the suspension to be relatively compliant and striking a good mix of ride/handling. I'm sure you could stiffen it up but this one was not made to be the sharpest possible sport sedan. They had some RWD trims for that and frankly this is not an all out, no compromises sport sedan. It's not supposed to be. It's merely very good and probably a similar era 3-series feels similar. A basic 3 series is not an M3.
The trans shifted fine. The brakes were kinda meh but sort of par for the course for what this is. Everything seemed to work. Really no complaints about the way it drove. It was shockingly tight and felt really nice over some crappy surfaces. Basically this is exactly what I want in a daily.
Then I got under it with the ramps. Rear definitely had some spots of rust on some of the subframe and other stuff. Most of the body looked very good. Exhaust looked good. This is what I predicted. Everything looks good except the spots that don't. Is this a deal breaker? Some of it, kinda. I also noticed one plastic access cover on the underbody panel was hanging on by a thread because a bolt was sheared off.
I even adjusted the front passenger seat to be comfortable with maybe 2 inches between my knees and the glove box. Plenty of legroom.
Then I sat behind myself. Had about an inch to the rear seat which translates to plenty of room. I was actually surprised as I expected it to be tighter. This is all good.
Basically, I could totally live with this car as a daily/winter car. It is about as good as I expected across all the categories.
What I'm not sure about on this particular example is the cosmetic stuff plus some of the corrosion stuff. See the onedrive link for more. Overall it is much cleaner than my STS and I think cleaner than my STS was when I bought it, as well. But I think buying a car with visible wheel well rust is just a bad idea.
I do also feel like this is not a $10k car to me as it sits. One scenario could be that Carmax offers him like $6500 and then he takes $7k from me. I think I'd feel comfortable with $7k. But nowhere near $10k.