E30 Zone

Hi all,

I've been looking at e30's and every one seems to have a slightly different front bumper. I've had a look in the wiki but it doesn't go into too much detail.

Is the only difference between the sport and non sport face lift bumpers the double rectangle vents in between the foglights? Where as the non sport just has the lower vent?

But then also some non sport bumpers have a very thin black front 'splitter' where as others have a more sporty colour coded scoop. Was this an optional extra?

Sorry for all the questions, i'm new to e30's just trying to find out about them before I go to look at one.

the bits with the vents aren't the bumpers, theyre the front valance. the bumper itself is just the thin extended bar which holts the indicators and numberplate.

pre and post facelift valances are different, look at the shape of the foglights and also the vents.

exactly how many vents there are depends on the model. on facelift cars, normal models had both the horizontal vents blanked off. cars with oil coolers had one of them open, cars with aircon the other.

the splitters at the bottom again varied with model. i think on pre-facelift cars the design changed at a certain date, and there was also what's known as the 'jimmy hill' splitter which justs forwards a bit.

on facelift cars everything got just a thin black standard lip, the 318is got a deeper colour coded splitter which extends downwards at the ends. the 'is' splitter is often retrofitted to other models for a more aggressive look as they just clip on and off replacing the standard thin version.

sports are different again.

the early prefacelift (tech1) sports used a normal metal bumper (often painted body colour) and a plastic extension bellow which fits in front of the standard metal valance, and similar at the rear.

post facelift (tech2) sports had it's own bumpers, different to any other late e30, which didnt have rubbing strips on them, and again a plastic extension which fits in front of the standard metal valance. which slats are open on sports aain depends on options. all proper sports should have oil coolers, so should have one of the slats open, but the other was only open if the car had aircon.

i hope that helps.

i expect it would be easier if i found some photos to go allong with the words

Ah thank you that is exactly what I was after, if you wanted to you could remove the blanking plate on a car not equipped with an oil cooler/air con?