Welp.

The BMW E30 M3, the O.G. M3, the quintessential BMW, really, has been a highly prized and coveted collector’s item for a long time but a quarter-million dollar sale on one is... pretty wild.

that just sold on on Bring A Trailer for $250,000 had 8,000 miles on it and looks essentially perfect. But that dollar figure still blows every E30 sale ever out of the water. At least, every one I’ve ever seen. Every one BaT has seen too, according to its auction result spreadsheet on this model.

A nice ’89 E30 M3 went for about $100,000 two years ago and the auction site hadn’t recorded anything higher until today. Check out if you want to see a big batch of photos of today’s crazy expensive car, by the way.

I... I don’t even know, fam. These are great cars with a lot of cache, historic value, a lovely design, and a great driving experience but, $250,000! If you wanted to buy one of these in the near future, sorry. You can expect this sale to be cited following “I know what I have” in every ad for these now and even clapped-out ones are about to go from “expensive” to “come on, dude.”

I don’t mean to sound super bitter, I wasn’t in the market myself, but I do get a little bummed out thinking that great cars like this are just being used as parking spots for large sums of cash. Just a life of getting shifted from one super nice garage space to another. Surely, you can’t spend this kind of coin on an old M3 and then drive it, right? Every mile would cost you thousands! Or something!

That said, I have a couple cars I barely drive and just enjoy looking at so who am I to criticize other collectors.

It does seem like it keeps getting harder to buy old hardware, though. I think I’m going to hang on to my Datsun a little longer after all.