Supergoat Garage

I sold my 2022 BMW 330e as I wanted to get into something a little less comfortable. The 330e was extremely smooth and very nice to drive. A little too nice for me. And for the last several years I really wanted to get into an M235i or M2. However, having a child made the 330e the smarter choice. Fast forward a little and she is now almost ready to front face so it was time to look.

I had a two requirements. It had to be a manual and it had to have low mileage. While I didn’t really care too much about the year of the car, if I am going to sell a 2022 for a car as old as possibly 2014 then I at least wanted it to have low mileage.

After some looking I found what looked like the perfect car. Carvana had a 2015 M235i with a manual transmission and only 17k miles. To make it even better, just one owner. I paid more than I wanted to for it but I was envisioning a one owner, garage kept car that should be flawless.

Unfortunately, what arrived was less than flawless. It stared off with the delivery driver bringing to my attention that the front driver-side center cap came off at some point. Because Carvana deems that as “cosmetic” he said they would not replace it. Even though, as you can see in the above photo, it was there in the photos online. I ordered one from Amazon for $20. That would have been a very cheap and easy customer service win for Carvana but they did not seem interested in that.

That set the stage for this car. I walked around the outside and overall it was nice. No previous paintwork, no signs of damage. The front bumper did have some flat black painting done on the lower portions that you can see in the photo above. I’m assuming there was some scrapes and this is a dealer “trick” to let them cheap out and not properly paint the bumper. Carvana is not the only dealer guilty of doing this I should add, but still they did it. So I’m calling them out on it.

They took this same approach to the mirror caps. The OEM caps are supposed to be Ferric Grey on all M235i’s, but they must have needed paintwork so Carvana whipped out the flat black again.

Inside the car was more of the same in terms of cheaping out. The first thing I noticed was the musty water smell. Next was the door panels. The leather on them had all been repaired very poorly. It looks like they just ran a bead of silicone around them to “fix” it.

The back cushions on the rear seats were also worn. The driver side one was split at a seam and they used a clear glue to fix it. Not only was the repair work badly done, but you could still see the split through the clear glue. The driver seat where the handle is to flip the seat forward for rear access also had a very poor leather repair.

The LCD screen in the gauge cluster also had artifacts and needed to be replaced.

At this point the delivery driver was at his truck getting paperwork ready. I was about to tell him to just load the car back up and take it. But first I got on my phone and started looking up parts. Truthfully the exterior was fine overall, mechanically it seemed good, more on that later, and it still only had 17,000 miles on it. However, it seems they were all spent sitting outside in the Florida sun and not in a garage.

I found that for about $600 I could replace everything that I immediately found issue with. Looking at it from that perspective I accepted the car. The fact that Carvana also includes a 100 day warranty also made me feel better.

So I signed the papers, ordered the needed parts and went about looking deeper into the car. This brought on even more parts that I needed to order. I first removed all five air fresheners that they stuck in the car and looked for the source of the odor.

I found it.

The rear seat bottom was covered in mold. And they were not old, dry stains. It was still wet, living mold.

I immediately contacted Carvana. I submitted a warranty claim and it was denied the next day saying it was just a cosmetic issue. I contacted them back and explained it was not just cosmetic. It is a health issue and I want the seat replaced and for them to pay for a Haz-Mat cleaning of the car. They denied that and instead sent me a $300 check since the car was not detained completely. When I expressed that I was very unhappy with the level of service I was receiving and that $300 would not cover the extent of what the car needed they gave me a canned response and disconnected the chat instantly.

At this point I had only driven the car to work once. I was also still within the return window. Maybe I’m just stubborn, or maybe a little dumb, but I never really considered that option. I ripped out the carpet, the seats, the door panels and did my own deep clean.

The driver seat had some mold staining under it, so this car obviously had some water intrusion at some point. But all the electronics appeared fine and there were no other signs of major flood or anything. No silt lines or dirt/debris found behind interior panels.

So all in all here is what I replaced on the car up to this point:

• Mirror Caps
• Bought a front lip to cover the cheap bumper repair
• Interior door panels and rear side panels
• Rear parcel shelf – The one it had was badly sun damaged.
• Rear bench seat
• Driver side rear seat back cushion
• Driver seat back cushion
• Gauge Cluster to take apart and get the LCD panel from

All that came in for less than $1k as I shopped used on eBay and Redline Parts. After cleaning the car and essentially replacing the interior the car finally looks and smells like it only has 17k miles on it.

I did also run a deep scan on the ECUs to check for mileage tampering and all came back OK.

The car is getting back on track. This brings me to the second time I drove it to work and the reason for the huge repair bill. That morning, the car seemed fine, but as I neared work, I noticed something odd. When I changed gears, it felt like the car decelerated more than expected before I let the clutch pedal back out. It wasn’t a major issue, just something I noticed. I only realized this when I was less than a mile from work, so I parked it and went on with my day.

After work the car was fine. I didn’t notice any weird decelerating between shifts so I just assumed it was all in my head. As it was only the second time I had driven the car, I just assumed it may have been how M235i’s drove.

Either way, I was on my way home. About half way home as I was cruising along the car suddenly felt like it lost power for a few seconds. I hit the brakes, and then shifted to a lower gear and all was OK. It happened again and then a third time. By this point I was very close to my house so my plan was to get it home and then make a warranty claim. At that time I didn’t realize it was the brakes that were causing the issue. I assumed it was the engine cutting power from a faulty traction control sensor or something. It was raining out so that made sense to me.

The car never got home though. When I was about a mile from my house I realized that I was giving the car a lot of throttle. About 50% throttle just to maintain 35mph. The speed limit was 45mph and I wasn’t even able to hit that. At that point I realized that something was wrong and I found a safe place to pull over.

That’s when I saw smoke billowing out of the wheel wells. I got out and saw this:

Those brakes are HOT. And they were completely seized up. It never even completed it’s second journey and already had a problem. Carvana has authorized repair shops they want you to take the car to. One of them is Firestone, and there was one about a mile away from where the car stopped. I had it towed to BMW instead. Nothing against Firestone, but this seemed like an issue they would have sent me to BMW for anyway so I figured I would just save time.

The next day BMW contacted me with the damage. It looked like the ABS/DSC module was bad and caused the brakes to drag to the point they finally got so hot they locked up. In fact the bright blue ///M brake calipers were now a deep, toasty black from the heat.

Here is everything that was replaced:

• Both front calipers, pads and rotors
• Both front wheel bearings
• ABS/Speed sensors
• ABS/DSC Module
• Master Cylinder
• Most of the brake lines up front

Total cost with labor: $13,009.

When they reached out to me, I could tell from their tone that they didn’t think the work would get done. That’s reasonable. I mean, who spends $13k on repairs for a 2015 2-series? I reminded them that I noted Carvana, or rather their warranty company Silver Rock, had a warranty on it. So, they called them.

After a week of going back and forth with Silver Rock, BMW was able to get them to cover all of it. Well, all of it except for my $350 deductible and about two hours worth of the labor that the warranty company decided wasn’t needed for some reason.

So they ended up covering over $12k of the bill. But let’s back up a bit. Because before they approved the repairs I actually got an email, a text and a phone call from Carvana trying to buy me out of the car.

Their offer was actually pretty generous. They would return the car, give me an extra $500 towards another car and pay the shipping on it. I did look. At the time there was no other manual M235i’s. For what I paid for my low mileage one I could have had an M240i with about 40k on it. But they didn’t have a manual one and I wanted to keep the lower miles and the N55 engine. I know the advantages of the B58 very well, but I prefer the N55 for the sounds and feel of it. I’m not going to tune this thing to 500+whp so that advantage didn’t really matter to me either.

I did look for M2s as well, but no manuals available at the time and in Charleston where all roads are straight and packed with traffic the extra money for one just didn’t make sense. The M235i doesn’t make sense either really in this area, but I like it and can justify the price to sit in traffic more than the M2.

So I politely told them thanks, but no thanks. I wanted them to fix the car. They gave me 24 hours to think it over again. I did, and then told them I’d still prefer they fix the car.

So fast forward back to the present and the car is back. I’ve put about 200 miles on it since getting it back it’s great. About 80% of the braking system is made of brand new OEM parts done by BMW so it works great. The interior has been mostly sorted and the exterior is good.

All I have left to do now before I can call it “good” is to restore the headlights. They are showing age and need a full sand and polish. That is not unexpected. And then it will be a good base, ready to have a few small modifications done. My goal was to start off with that. After all the work I put into reconditioning the Miata when I bought it, I was not expecting to have to do a similar reconditioning to a one owner, 17k mile car that should have been reconditioned by a major automotive retailer. But here we are. I’m not sure how I feel about Carvana at this point. On one hand they did pay to fix the car at a cost to them of over $12k. On the other hand, that was after delivering a car in the state they did and refusing to pay for a $20 center cap. Granted it is was Silver Rock that paid for the repairs, but they are under the same umbrella. Same Company, different financial buckets.

The car is in good shape. BMW inspected it and said the wipers need replacing, which I’m taking care of, and there’s a small leak in the washer fluid pump, but that’s fine with me. It drives well and is ready for many miles ahead. It seems to have had a rough past, not from driving, but from sitting in the sun without care. Now, it can rest in a garage and be well taken care of. I’ll share updates when I can, but the Miata is still the main character here. See you next time!