Introduction

Buying a 1600/1602/2002 – or "02-series" – BMW can be one of the most enjoyable car buying and ownership experiences you will ever encounter. However, this is not something you should do alone.

With the help of a lot of people, we continue to accumulate and revise this buyer’s guide to help you in your quest for the right 02-series for you.

The best way to go look at an 02-series is:
  1. Become knowledgeable about these cars. Associate with people that know what they are doing, read as much as you can, and go look at as many cars as you can before making a decision which one you want to buy.
  2. Then, take the car to a knowledgeable, willing and interested mechanic. See the section about selecting a mechanic.
In this buyer’s guide, we will try to focus primarily on just US Models, but we will insert non-US information as necessary.

We tried to stay away from creating a Frequently Asked Questions document. The goal of this document is to give you some guidelines on what to look for when purchasing a BMW 1600/2002 and we will try to stay focused on this endeavor.

Lastly, we didn’t want to create an authenticity guide. Where it is important, we point out things to look for to confirm originality. But, the factory did some unusual things, so not all of our guidelines are "hard fast rules" – they are merely areas to look at and ask intelligent questions to confirm originality.