What an incredible event! For anyone who wasn’t there, you just have to know, At The Vintage 2023 ended with a spectacular double rainbow and a black bear!
Now that I gave away maybe the best part of this years event, I do want to say Scott & team once again did world-class job organizing “Another Great Event” for At The Vintage 2023. This year was my second year back after having not been since 2015 when it was in the Winston Salem area, and my first ever as a vendor. And first time as a vendor anywhere for that matter!
I have to admit I feel a bit awkward just bursting back in to the scene and immediately trying to hawk E30 parts. But after so much positive feedback last year hanging out at the Clarion hotel and at the main event in Hot Springs, talking to event goers and other vendors, I felt confident the At The Vintage crowd would be accepting of my vendor-ship this year. I was thrilled to have my highest hopes validated.
In fact, I was a little amazed at how many times I heard the phrase “Thank you for doing this”! So I want to give a huge “THANKS!” to everyone who stopped by the booth and offered support, insights, and ideas for future parts!
Already the orders are coming in and we’ve only just gotten started. While that tells me we are on to something, I’m also just thrilled I’m able to use my skills to give something back to a community that is just as passionate about these cars as I am.
The magnificent 3.0CSiThe Street Carver™! I’d totally forgotten about this thing!At The Vintage 2023 was gifted an epic double rainbowThe E34 Touring is one of my all time favorite vintage BMWsBill Geraghty’s custom 850i
If you’ve never been to “The Vintage” before and you are on the East coast, I hope you’ll come check out the event next year. There are tons of great people, great cars spanning from “barely got here” to “Pebble Beach”. Above all it’s just a bunch of great people and it’s just superchill.
I can’t promise a double rainbow, but if you own a vintage BMW or appreciate vintage German cars, you’ll have a fantastic time!
This is a project that’s been on the list for a while, but recently I sawseveral propleon the forums and reddit looking for something like this, so I decided to go ahead and bump it to the front of the E30 Update project list.
If you know anything about the E30, you probably know about pre & post-update versions. Before 1988, the US models shipped with the endearingly nicknamed “Diving Board” bumper; a big, bulky, impact regulation-meeting aluminum beam. Some people replace them with the Euro bumpers if they’ve got the kachinga, which, not gonna hate on that, they do look nice. At the very least they get tucked, which is a nice compromise and definitely one of the mods I’m thinking about for my car. Either way, while generally considered an inferior design to what was sold in Europe and the rest of the world before the 1988 update, I think it has aged, kind of like a fine cheese; a little stinky, but still, a delicacy to the seasoned pallet :p
So I thought it was time to give the “Diving Board” a little deserved attention.
What would that be? Well the issue is the US front plate frame. Some states require front plates, but many don’t. So adding to the somewhat inelegant presence of the US spec bumper, is this dangling hunk of plastic which, may or may not need to be there. But if it doesn’t need to be there, you can’t really remove it, or else you’re left with the bare aluminum beam revealing the license plate frame brackets and some holes, including the tow hook hole. And nobody is going to do that unless they just don’t have it anymore. Which, many cars don’t. Even if they did, they don’t have any real way to mount a Euro-style plate like you could with the ’88 and on bumpers. Now there are a couple other guys out there making a similar part, but it doesn’t look quite “stock”, and it doesn’t have a “designed in” way to mount the Euro plate.
So I made the E30 Diving board trim strip to solve all these problems. If your state doesn’t require you to have a front plate, you can take the US plate frame off and streamline the look of your “Diving Board”. And if you like the Euro plate look, it’s got the Euro plate holes too. Even if your state does require a front plate, you can mount it over the Diving Board strip if you use longer screws. So you don’t have to you know, zip-tie it on or something like that… I’ve seen your pics bro!
What you see here is the first prototype, but I made a few tweaks before I putting it on the site. First, I designed it a little tight, so I reduced the overall width by a few millimeters. Then I got a DM from a guy about the reddit poll I did for this project, and that’s when I realized that you could still mount a US plate on this with longer screws, so I added leveling around the US plate mount holes. That way if you do want or need to mount a US plate it doesn’t angle up awkwardly. Lastly, I added the tow hook hole with a little twist-off beauty cap. I also made a couple other little tweaks to make it a little easier to install which you’ll be able to see in the pics on the shop page. This part is made from professional grade MJF (Multijet Fusion) process plastic, and should provide many years of classy 80s impact resistance trimming!
So here’s the deal! For the first 10+ orders, I can get the price down to $129. Because I’m small time & don’t spend money on Google ads & keywords & stuff like that I’m going to put a 30 day “Deal Period” on it. After that, the price will go up to the one-off price. So if I only get 9 orders in 30 days, nobody gets the discount, and if I get 99 orders in 30 days everyone gets the discount! So I’m pretty sure there are 99 E30s out there that need this… (mine did!). So if you’ve got a diving board E30, go order a front bumper strip at e30update.com! If you do, I’d love to see some pics of it installed! Post it on reddit or insta or wherever and let me know!
Please be patient while we streamline our printing & shipping process! Thank you! Dismiss
