This has to be one of the rarest cars in China I have ever seen. There are only a few dozen E46 BMW 3-Series coupes in the country. And, as far as I know, this is the only one in red with black license plates and with a manual gearbox! Yes, this sporty little Bimmer is rarer than most Ferraris. I saw it in Beijing back in 2016 and it looked brilliant.
Note the apartment building, mirrored in the bonnet.
The E46 BMW 3-Series was manufactured from 1996 until 2006. The sedan was also made in China, at Brilliance-BMW, but only from 2004 until 2005. So even the locally-made sedan is rare! But the coupe is rarer still. It wasn’t made in China and it wasn’t officially exported by BMW either. Over my long long years in China, I have only seen a few.
The bright red color was called Electric Red in English and Japanrot in German, and that means Japanese Red. Five-spoke gray wheels were
The famous black license plates were issued to foreign-owned companies from the 1980s to the mid-00s. These companies could buy a car locally or import one. There were no limits on the number of cars or on price or on the engine type. The numbering started at A·00001 and then up. So the lower the number the older the car. Each province and municipality had its own black-license plate program. This BMW 3-Series coupe has 京A·24180.
This BMW was originally sold by a company called Hutter automobile, based in Winterthur. That’s a mountain city in Switzerland with a super exciting government website. Damn, I need more coffee! Hutter automobile still exists, they are called Hutter Dynamics now, and they sell BMW and Mini. They employ a lady in a suit with tattooed birds on her arm. She knows all about the BMW iX. Great company. I wonder if they know one of their E46 coupes ended up in China. Probably not. Mountain folks rarely look over the mountain, now do they?
The interior was in reasonable shape but in need of a good cleanup. The seats are part leather part cloth. The shiny trim survived all right but the black plastics have faded into gray. The gear lever is short for sporty.
There were no engine badges on the car, so I can’t be sure what is under the hood here. The coupe was available with various petrol and diesel engines. Diesel engines are forbidden in most Chinese cities so we can them out. The petrol engines ranged from a 1.6 to a 3.0 six-cylinder. Considering wheels, trim, and luxuries, our red coupe with black plates is likely a 328i powered by a 2.8 liter inline-6. But in any way, it is one of the prettiest and rarest BMWs in China you will find in the country and on this website.