At $9,500, Is This 2003 BMW 330i ZHP a Bavarian Bargain?

Nice Price or No Dice 2003 BMW 330i ZHP

The ad for today’s Nice Price or No Dice 330i details recent maintenance — the cost totaling more than a quarter of the car’s current asking price. Let’s see if that adds up to the car being a sports saloon steal.

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How do you define luxury in an automobile? Is it by tour de force gadgetry?

Or, does the definition center on refined materials, quiet comportment, and upscale accouterments? Whatever your definition, it probably doesn’t match that of American carmakers of the 1970s. Back then, luxury meant size, copious quantities of chrome, and vinyl tops.

By the mid-point of the ’70s, that definition began to change. Following consumer trends that saw cars like the Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7 Series redefine the category, American carmakers began to change as well.

The 1976 Cadillac Seville we looked at on Friday was GM’s initial salvo in retaliation to those interlopers. Smaller, less chrome-laden, but still with a vinyl top, it was uncharted territory for Cadillac.

It turned out, however, to be the right move, becoming one of the marque’s signature products for decades to come. Friday’s Seville was a throwback to that age of change and at £9,500 most of you would have gladly left it there. A super-narrow 52 percent No Dice loss was the result.

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I want to start out this week with an acknowledgment that, yes, I have been throwing up a lot of E46 candidates of late.

I know it can get dull and repetitive but there are just so many cool versions hitting the market these days that I think, for the short term, it’s worth giving them their due.

Take this 2003 BMW 330i as an example. At first glance, it’s a seemingly run-of-the-mill E46 four-door with some fancy wheels and bumpers. Take a closer look, however, and there’s a lot more going on here.

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This 330i has been optioned in a very deliberate manner, and the most important collection of codes being the ZHP package.

No, that’s not some sort of Dollar Store steak sauce brand. Instead, it’s a collection of appearance, function, and performance enhancements that make for a fairly unique experience.

The primary parts of the ZHP package include some massaging magic for the 3-liter M54 under the hood that adds seven horsepower, bringing the total to 235. The engine offers a 300 rpm higher redline for more space to enjoy those ponies too.

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Other upgrades include revised suspension tuning and a standard six-speed Getrag matched to a shorter final drive.

Aesthetic changes are the aforementioned wheels and bumpers along with Alcantara trim on the interior, most notably on the steering wheel. Now, Alcantara is great for parts of the car that never get touched, but it can age poorly when handled frequently.

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That’s notable here, as the three-spoke sport wheel looks a little less tidy than the rest of the interior. The sport buckets also show some wear, but amazingly for their age, there’s no apparent major damage or discoloration.

The dash and door cards look to be in great shape too, as does all the switchgear. The exterior is clean and notably, has perfectly clean headlamp lenses, a common bugaboo on E46s. Aside from some obvious aging in the black plastic trim, and some marring in the allots it’s all very acceptable.

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It’s much the same story under the hood too, and both the interior and engine have seen maintenance and age-related repairs in just the last year, as has the suspension.

This car’s options list doesn’t stop at the ZHP package and the ad lists all the codes and their associations.

Do you want the smoker’s package? Of course, you don’t. But this car still has it.

It also has a clean title and a claimed 153,302 miles on the odo. Those miles are most obvious on the steering wheel and in the list of updated and replaced parts. The question at hand is whether the car as a collection of pluses and minuses adds up to its £9,500 asking price.

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