Indy-Guy said:The M parallels really transform the style of these and the E32/E34's.
And this is why I now have winter M pars and summer M pars. I couldn't bear to put any other wheels on it for winter because they just look so much better than basically any other option, so it's running 4 fronts (18x8) with 235/50R18 Blizzaks for now. In the spring I'll probably get 18x9 M pars (E34 rears) for the front and run 255/45 up front with 275/40 on the 18x9.5 rears.
I shopped these because I think they are the best looking full size sedan ever made. My only issue was finding one with the black interior. In South Florida, every silver 740i has the gray interior and the sun eats them up. The black interior is my favorite and definitely stands up better, it’s just impossible to find. I looked for a couple of years to find a clean white or silver with black interior but no luck.
Good score!
In reply to maj75 :
I wanted the black interior too (and not a silver exterior), but the 2 I found with black interior weren't worth buying. One was gray/black, had almost 200k miles, but very clean, good price. Seller flaked out on me so I never got to see the car. Second one was black / black with 78k miles, decent price. But it was a salvage title and generally surprisingly beat for the mileage. Had way too many little things wrong. So I ended up with this one, silver with gray interior. Interior is in great shape, car has 50% tint on everything except the windshield and it's been garage kept, at least for the last 10-ish years (not sure about before that). In the end, I decided the silver looks a lot better in person than in pictures and I don't hate the gray interior.
Did a sneaky upgrade on the car last night. Bi-xenon conversion for the headlights. There's a handy kit to make the Morimoto Mini H1 7.0 projectors bolt up right in place of the stock Bosch low beam projectors, so now the car has better low beams and much better high beams (the bi-xenons plus the stock halogens). And you can barely tell anything was done from looking at the headlights with them in the car. I do need to shim the projectors up a bit though (especially on the driver's side), as once I aimed the projectors, the stock high beams are aimed a bit too high.
Stock light: 
Modified Light: 
Beam shots: 
Nice upgrade! Seems like the older I get, the more I value good lights.
ManhattanM (fka NY535iManual) said:Nice upgrade! Seems like the older I get, the more I value good lights.
Especially with all of the dark, empty roads around here, good lights are a very good thing. I've been really spoiled by the lights on the Jeep, so the BMW lights were kinda inadequate in my mind. Next up I need to figure out whether I feel the need to figure out an upgrade for the fog lights or if they're actually helpful in bad weather as-is.
For perspective on what I'm used to in the Jeep, that runs ECE pattern halogen housings with 80w low beam, 100w high beam H4 bulbs. Plus the high beams also trigger a pair of Euro (driving) pattern Hella 4000s with 100w bulbs and a pair of IPF 968 combo beams with 100w bulbs (angled outwards slightly). And for really bad weather, there's a pair of 85w IPF 840 yellow fogs in the stock bumper fog holes. So in other words, a heck of a lot of light on empty roads when you hit the high beams. The new BMW setup isn't quite as bright and doesn't throw quite as far or wide, but it's certainly good (and will get a little better once I've got it really dialed in).
Wow, your Jeep had a great setup! I think it would be really hard to get anywhere even close to that quality, just because there are some limits to the physics of what you can do with lights on a car versus even a smallish SUV. The higher off the ground the headlight buckets get, the better the throw, and you can only compensate so much with pattern/brighter lights or refraction or whatever. I was a passenger in a newish dodge dually earlier this year, it felt like riding behind two anti aircraft searchlights!
In reply to ManhattanM (fka NY535iManual) :
Yeah, I know I'll never quite match the Jeep high beams. In terms of raw lumen output I'm not all that far off though. 11,700 from the bulbs in the BMW, 15,800 in the Jeep. But the Jeep does have bigger reflectors, etc. and is probably a bit more optically efficient as a result.
As an update to this, now that winter is over I finally got the car some proper shoes for summer. Continental Extremecontact Sports in 255/45 on 18x9 M parallels up front, 275/40 on 18x9.5 in the rear. Even with that setup, the car has a shocking amount of tire clearance remaining. Based on how much I've got between the tire and strut up front and then fender clearance, it would easily fit the 275s in the front if not a 285 or 295. And the rear would fit 305s or better with no trouble.
Since the last posts the car has gotten a ton of maintenance, a new set of Bilstein HDs (still on the stock sport springs) and a set of camber plates up front.
i loved my E38 sooooooo much, and it was barely nicer than a beater.
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