How to fix a BMW? Buy a second BMW.

My garage looked like the Death Star’s trash compactor, but instead of droid parts, it was filled to the brim with jagged hunks of rusted metal that was hastily chopped off my blue E36 BMW. Even after all that work, the only rust-free parts of the car were the gaping holes in each floor. My tools to put the puzzle together? Harbor Freight’s worst flux-core welder, a not-quite-two-car garage and some sheet metal I’d bought on Amazon. I’m stubborn, sure, but even I could finally see I was in over my head.

So I invited my friends to help. The promise of pizza lured them over to help repair the rust, kicking off a miserable day in the garage. We spent the first few hours trying to clear enough space to grind and weld without setting anything on fire, finally rendering our workspace safe by about noon. Then we worked until sunset cutting and welding, wondering if the rust would ever end, never mind whether it would ever be replaced with fresh sheet metal. At least the left-front fender was easy to get out of the way–it’d already mostly rusted off.

Then I heard a voice from behind a stack of pizza boxes: “I know how we could fix this rust immediately.” It was Tom, my friend and our publisher, fresh off a shift running the grinder. “You should really scrap this rusty POS and start with a better car. That could get you a title, too.”

Oh right, the title. I should probably come clean and admit I never got one. No big deal for a race car–the $2000 Challenge I’m building this for doesn’t require any paperwork–but a huge deal for me. I don’t have a place to park an unregistered car, and I don’t have a trailer to move it around. That’s why my townhome’s somewhat small garage has been full of rusty blue BMW for the last seven months. My HOA sends me letters if I leave the lid off my trash can, so I can only imagine what they’d do if they saw my rusty, gutted, titleless BMW in the driveway.

You can say I’m not a smart man, and I won’t be offended, because I ignored these realities–and Tom’s advice–and started searching Facebook Marketplace for a less rusty front fender for my blue E36. The Marketplace gods smiled upon me, and I found an entire rust-free white E36 listed for the low, low price of $850. Sure, the engine was blown, but the body looked perfect. I couldn’t believe my luck, so I messaged the seller: “Hey, would you sell me just the left-front fender and some trim?”

That, my friends, is the art of the deal–at least, that’s what I told my co-workers, who mocked my decision-making skills even harder than they had when I bought the blue car. But not owning a trailer is a good way to keep yourself from buying cars that don’t run, and I don’t own a trailer.

My boss does, though, which is how I found myself riding in the truck with Tom and his father, Tim, on my way to buy a car that doesn’t run. “This is a nice area,” Tim remarked a few miles away, right before we literally crossed onto the wrong side of the railroad tracks. Isn’t Facebook Marketplace exciting?

Before I knew it, I was standing in a yard littered with about eight cars, chatting with the seller I’d agreed to buy a fender from. Shockingly, one of those eight cars was a relatively clean E36. Even better, it was completely rust-free, and the seller promised to hand me a title, too. This white car could solve all my problems, and I was ready and willing to buy it for $850.

Sold. All that was left to do was some paperwork–which is why it was so heartbreaking when the seller handed me a title he’d never bothered to file with the DMV. Long story short: He didn’t have a legal title to give me.

But $400 is such a deal. I started bargaining with myself: This car didn’t have a title, but it was so rust-free! Hey, any upgrade is still an upgrade, right? Maybe I should buy it anyway.

Fortunately, Tom was there to save me from myself: “Why don’t you give him half the money now, then half tomorrow if he can provide a legal title? You were ready to buy one fender for that price, and we’re already here with a trailer.” The seller agreed, and we made a handwritten bill of sale laying out the terms.

And I’ll be honest here: I wasn’t exactly sure what “everything” meant. I knew I’d bought the car, but I’d also heard the seller reference extra parts a few times. I didn’t really care, either, for the simple reason that my lizard brain was overwhelmed with endorphins from buying an entire car for just $400.

So I was absolutely stoked when the seller led me back to a dark shed in the corner of the yard, where, illuminated by our phones’ flashlights, he handed us bin after bin of E36 parts until the shed was empty and the bed of our truck was full. We loaded up the car and hit the road home.

And I’d like some credit for learning my lesson here, because I managed to leave that white E36–my $400 pride and joy–on the trailer while I focused instead on getting a title. True to his word, the seller got his paperwork straightened out, and I gave him the remaining $200 for a clean Florida title. Finally, I’d fixed my race car’s rust problems.

At least, that’s how I explained the new dead car in my possession to my wife. “It’ll be easy,” I told her. “We just need to yank the bad drivetrain out of the white car, then yank the good drivetrain out of the rusty blue car, then swap them, then scrap the blue car. Then I’ll have a running, driving, rust-free E36 for pennies on the dollar! What could possibly go wrong?”