Sometime in 1984, a man named Reg walked into Park Lane BMW to select his first company car. He asked for the Sales Manager and said, “I’d like that one,” pointing at a Hennarot 318i parked in the corner of the showroom. Despite the manager’s protestations, “You’ll have to make an order like everyone else”, a short time later, Reg pulled the same car into his North London driveway, and a new BMW fan was born in the shape of a 6-year-old me. Fast-forward 40 years, and I find myself with a problem: I have five cars but only space for about three and a half on the driveway; as I get less slim, the vehicles get bigger and more valuable, so something needs to be done to save my back and the car paintwork.

A plan was hatched to find a storage unit, but due to high local rental rates, it also needed to generate income, probably by offering maintenance. In a most excellent stroke of luck (arguably for me more than him), my good friend and exceptional auto-magician Jon found himself redundant, so we agreed to start ‘Classic and Prestige’, specialising in maintenance, storage, and restoration of all vehicles – if this editor is any good the advert can be found somewhere nearby. We had no idea the amount of work we’d pull in initially, so getting our own restoration project to fall back on was a no-brainer; we also agreed to ignore the inevitable Mike Brewer/Edd China comparisons, of which there were many.

We were originally looking at Alfas and Maseratis, and a 911S was discussed at one point, but as soon as I saw ‘BVX 38L’ listed, I was pretty set on it. Some CSLs appeal more than others to me, and this one ticked all of the boxes—great colour, Alpina wheels, Schnitzer lip, and I’d finally have a car with chrome wheel arches—amazing.

Unfortunately, buying the CSL involved dealing with Bonhams, which wasn’t an enjoyable experience. Without going into great detail when viewing and collecting the car, I was made to feel like an inconvenience rather than a customer; they ignored an agreement to make a bid before the online auction began; due to business demands, I had to submit a high bid online – the 2nd highest bid was £500 less, the 3rd highest bid was £20,000 less, make of that what you will … Regardless, I was now the owner of one of my all-time dream cars, a BMW CSL. I remember seeing them racing as a kid, thinking they were the best-looking cars out there. For me, the Alexander Calder CSL is the most beautiful race car ever, and suddenly, I find myself with one parked in my garage. After a trip back from collecting the car, which involved a lot of M25, I was looking forward to a proper drive on proper roads.

Jon, however, is one of these proactive types, so by the time I visited the following afternoon, my CSL was missing quite a lot of the dashboard, a seat, all of the heating system, and one of the doors. In fact, with plenty of customer work, it was a long five weeks before I got to drive the car for the second time. So much for having your own garage!

The project was going to go in one of two directions—the preferred option was to tidy the car up and try to sell it for a small profit, but it was never going to be that easy, was it? The “unexpectedly high” auction price was also a major factor, as a lot of the potential profit on a quick tidy-up was already gone. We’d noticed some “interesting” stuff when viewing the car at Bonhams and knew it needed some fettling, but once we had a decent look “interesting” developed into “mystifying” – brake fluid hose missing a jubilee clip causing it to leak brake fluid all over the bulkhead, household chocolate blocks used on injector cables, wood screws holding in the head unit via heater controls, cheapo speakers cut into the door cards and trim/clips that would take seconds to remove covered with overspray. There was also bubbling under relatively new paint, tyres I’d never heard of, and it sounds well overdue for a valve adjustment – we were left asking ourselves why anyone who owns a car like this maintains it like a £7500 runabout. Probably because that’s roughly what the previous owner paid for it in 2003. Unfortunately, I don’t have much history of the two prior owners. However, I do know the owner before me wasn’t shy of getting stuff fixed, including at least one engine rebuild. That said, I get the feeling that the garage he was taking it to either didn’t know or didn’t care about the car’s pedigree, as some of the work is genuinely puzzling. No doubt we will discover more as we go deeper.

Which brings us to that other direction.  The seats have been recovered,  but the interior wood needs replacing; the chrome is mostly good but needs attention in places, and there are flat spots and fogging on paint due to more sub-standard filler and paintwork. It clearly needs new dampers as it handles and rides not unlike the boat I visited the Norfolk Broads on recently, though it will still light up the tyres out of a junction. I’m not sure I want to do a track day quite yet, mind you.

The only major corrosion we found was on the bottom of the driver’s A-pillar, but a lot of this was due to an earlier bodged repair. The plan after driving it around for what is left of Summer is for a bare metal respray, new or re-chromed metalwork, engine sorting, new bushes and dampers – basically aiming to get as close to as showroom condition as possible. I’ll probably fit some kind of retro Bluetooth head unit and hide some speakers somewhere, and apart from modern brake pads and tyres, the car will stay OE. That said, I’m undecided whether to retain the Schnitzer lip or go for a Batmobile-style airdam, which could be a slippery slope of its own.

It’s more work than we might have planned, but the availability of parts and excellent community support means we aren’t scared. Not too much, anyway.

I absolutely love driving it. I’ve been using it daily for the past couple of weeks and find myself taking far too many pictures. We have taken it along with the Citroen to a few car shows, and there is invariably a crowd around them both; the CSL getting the general public vote. Neither is a good car to own if you don’t want to talk to people about them, but I’m not tired of it yet.

Compared to most of my other cars, it’s very small, and the low waistline and lots of glass make it feel totally different to drive from anything modern. The low-down torque is surprising, but I think it needs some investigation as it’s not happy at higher revs; once that’s sorted with some new dampers and bushes, I reckon it will be pretty rapid.

Despite all the good intentions of keeping it OE, I will admit I’ve been looking for an M49 or similar period race engines. So, if anyone has one collecting dust, let me know, and we can talk about the third, even more expensive, direction.

The big question is, will I be able to bring myself to sell it? I’m probably at 75% “yes”. It is a project, and we need to complete this to move on to the next.

Give me another few months and another few miles, and I bet that number will be a lot lower …

What an incredible experience the 120-mile drive to the rendezvous was, let alone the tour itself, which followed the next day. It was great, and the car performed better than expected. Like all the other E9s participating in the event, the car quickly became the lead actor – whether driving through Bibury or parked at the Classic Car Hub – the response was terrific. Sunday came, and the E9 cars were all parked together, along with many other very special BMWs. It was a truly remarkable event that we shared with Club members and enthusiasts from Germany who equally enjoyed the beautiful winding roads through the Cotswolds.

Thankfully, the weather held for us all, and to make it even more memorable, there was one cherry on the cake still waiting for me. It was a huge surprise when the organisers announced that my CSL was chosen as the winner of the “Peoples’ Choice” trophy! I was mega surprised and still feel privileged, and it gave me huge pleasure to share that vote with the previous owner’s family. Hopefully, Mr Lank was looking down with a rye smile on his face.