2010 BMW 328i Touring M Sport, 6-speed manual

This 2010 BMW 328i Touring is finished in Titanium Silver over black leather with the M Sport package and the six speed manual gearbox, and is offered from Durbanville, Cape Town by durbanville_e91, about this seller, its third owner and the keeper of the car for nine years. It shows 186,400km and carries the naturally aspirated 3.0 litre N52 straight six. The original build sheet, published with the lot, shows the manual and the M Sport package as ordered rather than fitted later.

Three pedals in an E91 is the whole reason this lot is here. Almost every Touring of this generation left the factory with the automatic, and the manual estate has become the version enthusiasts look for and cannot find. The seller believes very few were delivered in this country in this specification. He was asked to substantiate that and could not, which is worth reading in the transcript rather than taking from the description.

The file is continuous from 2016 and covers the items this engine and gearbox are documented to need. The electric water pump and thermostat, the failure that strands an N52, were replaced at 171,200km in January 2024 with a coolant flush and a new expansion tank. The clutch and dual mass flywheel went in at 154,600km in 2022, with the rear main seal and the gearbox mounts done while the box was out. The valve cover gasket and both front aluminium control arms and bushes were done in 2021. The car was serviced and put on four new tyres in the standard non run-flat size ahead of the sale.

The flaws the seller states are an oil filter housing gasket that seeps and has not been resealed, a panoramic roof sunshade that runs slowly and has twice stopped short, a rough thirty second idle from cold with no stored fault, kerb damage to the front left rim, and a right front corner repaired in 2019 after a low speed collision. The panel shop invoice for that repair is published. One question went unanswered: asked to release the insurer's assessment report for it, the seller declined, saying the document carries the previous owner's policy details and he will not publish it. Bidders should price that accordingly.

The E90 generation arrived in 2005 and the N52 six that runs in this one is the part that has aged best. It was the last naturally aspirated straight six BMW built for the 3-Series before the turbocharged N54 and N55 took the line over, it uses a magnesium and aluminium composite block, and it revs to 7,000rpm without a turbocharger deciding when the power arrives. Enthusiast interest in the E90 and E91 has moved almost entirely onto the naturally aspirated cars for exactly that reason.

The Touring body added the estate practicality and the split tailgate with the separately opening glass, which is the detail owners talk about years later. Ordered with the M Sport package and the six speed manual it becomes a specification that BMW made available and that almost nobody actually took, because the market was already buying automatics.

That is what makes it collectable now and it is also what makes it hard to verify. There is no register for South African E91 build specifications, no equivalent of a homologation certificate, and the build sheet proves what the car is without proving how many others there are. The claim in the room is that it is nearly unique here. The evidence in the documents proves the car and not the claim.