Rusty But Trusty

Over here, we’re big fans of the safety colors used in the early 1970s, especially by most major German manufacturers. Colorado orange, Inca orange, and Agave green were quite popular on BMW 2002s, but there were also some rarer safety colors like Mint green and Golf yellow. So whenever a car in one of the rare colors pops up, it’s an automatic feature candidate here. And while recent studies have been inconclusive about whether certain colors actually correlate with a reduced accident rate, these cars do evoke an era where manufacturers were making a first collective step towards improving occupant (and pedestrian) safety. Check out this 1971 BMW 2002 for sale for $4250 in Portland, OR.

German sedans are nearly entirely available in muted colors nowadays, with the exception of red if you’re lucky. And while Golf yellow is probably not the right color for a modern 5-series, it would be nice if they offered something with a little more impact than, say, Corolla beige or Sonata silver. So while this bright, nearly eye-searing yellow might not be to everyone’s taste, it’s a nice change from the usual. And clearly, non-supercar-buying American consumers are not scared of bright colors – see Mini, Fiat, VW’s Beetle and even the Prius C for reference.

This particular car looks to be in decent shape, and benefits from heavy investment over the last 6 years, including a rebuilt head, rebuilt shifter, and new radiator, exhaust, and battery. That said, the seller does concede it has some rust, but says it’s in generally great shape. Reading that it’s a daily driver is always encouraging – with any luck, any issues pertaining to reliability have been sorted out.

What little can be seen of the interior looks good – it’s nice to see a car with hubcaps, the bus-size steering wheel, and stock seats. The price of the car is a little over our self-imposed $4000 limit, but the color is very appealing, and with a little negotiation you should be able to get this down under the bar. So how about it, will you join the resistance to overthrow the dominance of boring colors?

Tags: 2002, BMW, e10, Feature, german, sedan

This entry was posted on August 28, 2014 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.