hi anxious? you from penang?
if you're in the klang valley, you can always come meetup with owners and check out their cars and find out all you wanna know.. there are quite a few 328 E36's in the club.
i have a 97 model, about 165,000km on the clock now.. the gearbox is still doing well. actually.. low end accel. is a lot stronger than the 325. if you felt the car feeling sluggish during a test drive, its because you didnt mash the pedal straight to the floor and cut-down switch and you'd probably aren't in sport mode. manufacturer claims 7.3 sec for the Auto's 0-100km/h sprint, and it sure feels like it.
i looked at almost 12 cars before finding the car i bought.. after buying it, i spent something like RM4000 to get it up to a condition i was happy with.. the stuff i changed were all wear and tear items.. nothing that would cause the car any real problems on the road.
and no, there are no nikasil problems that i have heard off in malaysia. if there was a problem, nikasil issues will have cropped up in most cars after 100,000kms.
Symptoms are poor starting, rough idle and refusing to start outright.
since you have driven the E36, i wont have to say anything about driving the cars
this is the best part, even if you buy a smaller engined bmw, the dynamics of the car are still all there, you only lose out on the power. i have pics of my car here :
http://www.bmwclubmalaysia.com/forums/my-turn-share-t9756.html
