Ever since I was a high school student subscribing to Road and Track in the mid to late seventies, I have held the dream of someday owning one of the 630 series BMW's which represented the ultimate combination of luxury and performance in what I consider to be one of the most beautifully styled cars of that period.

In August of 1996, that dream was finally realized when I began looking at several 633s and 635s as well as one grey-market M-6 advertised in the local paper, focusing on cars with less than 200,000 miles costing under $12,000. Eventually, I purchsed a black 1985 635CSi from an individual who lived near by, for $10,600, which was really a bit more than I could comfortably afford, but it seemed like the best car for the money.

• Why I bought this particular car

At this time there are still a few things wrong or about to go wrong, and one particularly gruesome tale of woe which was the inspiration for this web page.

The front end shimmy turns out to be the Achilles heel for this particular chassis from BMW, and it seems that any 5 BMW specialists will tell you 5 different things to do to fix it, the common denominator being that any of them will cost at least $400, and may run into the thousands.

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