Better than ‘NEUE’
Jamie Rose battled through to restore his spectacular 2002tii. Phase one is now complete. Next stop, turbo…
Values in the current classic car market tend to favour the restoration of many makes and models back to their original factory specification, but it hasn’t always been so. Back in 2005 when Jamie Rose started his BMW 2002tii project, the value of a properly sorted example was around the £5k mark.
‘The car I’d bought was absolutely rotten,’ he recalls. ‘And I remember after having a look at current values thinking ‘this is going to cost me about three times that to get it back up to standard’, so I pushed it into a corner of my workshop while I considered what to do.’
He hadn’t specifically been looking for a tii, but struck it lucky finding the second most sought-after model in the 2002 range. ‘It was before the internet really took over, in the free ads paper. I pulled it out of someone’s garden in Clacton-upon-sea; it started on the key, even if it sounded a bit doggy, but it hadn’t run properly in a few years. The owner was after £800, but his wife just wanted rid, so I offered £400 and he had to take it.’
Weighing up the pros and cons of what to do with the car, Jamie was stuck in two minds; on one hand there was no doubt it’d be a money pit, while on the other he’d always loved the model and desperately wanted to do it up. ‘I’d bought it on a whim really, and didn’t know what to do with it. Another chap offered me £200 and wanted to banger race it, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it go round a track.’
A plan is formulated
Jamie finally decided that if he was going to commit to the project, then it’d be built to the specification that he wanted. ‘My plan to keep it original didn’t make sense, I’d have been spending thousands more than it’d be worth. I’d always wanted a 2002 Turbo – as this was my dream car as a child – so that’s why I decided to put all the arches on it.’
The first step was to strip the shell. This revealed the metalwork to be in even worse condition than first thought; time to put his skills as a welder to good use. He attacked the sills, fitting new inners and outers, before new floorpans, front wings, boot floor, rear arches and both front and rear valances. How long did the welding take? ‘Difficult to say, as it done over such a long period of time and in bits and bobs. But I started prepping it for paint in 2009.’
The roof in particular proved to be a challenge: ‘The inside of the roof has a wooden frame and this had rotted, but trying to remove it and fit a new one without damaging anything was so very difficult.’ The original Webasto sunroof went to specialist R&S Coachbuilts in Sandwich for refurbishment.
With the structural work complete it was time for him to start putting his stamp on the car; a glassfibre Turbo body kit arrived from Norfolkbased BMW specialist Jaymic for £600. ‘It didn’t fit straight out of the box, and required a fair bit of work to fit my car. When BMW took the 2002 and made in into a Turbo it was just crudely screwed into the bodywork… I wanted a better finish, so I filled the holes in and that took weeks and weeks.’
Next he put his experience as a paint sprayer back to work, as he prepped the newly muscular shell for paint. Time for matters to turn mechanical.
Engine’s no good, wait…
‘I sent the engine to Coltec Racing Engines,’ recalls Jamie. ‘When I gave it to them with all leaves covering it I can remember Richard Coles saying “I don’t think it’ll be much good”. He hadn’t worked on one before, but he was amazed at the build quality.’
One of the pistons was sticky and could have been chanced, but Jamie opted for a new set at £800 and an upgraded camshaft. ‘All in all it cost £3500 to rebuild it.’ He also chose to replace the original mechanical Kugelfisher fuel injection system. In came an Emerald ECU, E30 inlet manifold and modern Mini Cooper injectors.
Reality bites, thrice
Real life caused the pause button to be hit in 2010, with the arrival of his daughter Summer. ‘Say no more,’ he offers. And just four months later the untimely passing of his father Steve from cancer, at the age of just 53. It wasn’t until 2013 that he ‘got properly back on it.’ The car was finally painted – in Turbo Polaris Silver – at Chilvers Body Repairs in Ipswich,
‘Filling the holes in the body took weeks and weeks. But it was worth it’
with Jamie completing the polishing to get the finish he wanted and re-fitting all the panels and the Webasto sunroof.
‘Ah that bonnet,’ he says, with gritted teeth. ‘I almost gave up because of it,’ he says. ‘I just couldn’t get it to fit, and then I spent weeks trying to ensure I could open it from both sides. It was niggling me that I could do so from the driver’s side, but not the passenger’s; I happened to glance on a BMW Forum, and it said it was designed like that!’ Jamie admits there were many times that he thought of selling the project, but instead he’d simply ‘put it away for a bit’ at the back of his workshop and come back to it later afresh.
Front and rear strut braces were fitted to stiffen the structure and the new shock absorbers and lower springs. ‘Nothing too fancy,’ he says. ‘To make it really useable I decided to fit a five-speed gearbox. JFL Classics in Wales supplied a refurbed unit and a matching limited slip differential from an E21 5-series. ‘The gearbox isn’t really an easy fit, as you have to shorten the propshaft and get it rebalanced,’ explains Jamie.
Then, at the age of just 38, he received some shocking news. ‘I’d had a lump on my thyroid gland for about eight years, but had it monitored. I had a medical and another
younger doctor noticed it, and asked another specialist to look at it. Ultrasound showed nothing, as did a biopsy and the only thing left to do was to take it out. When they did, they found cancer and by then it had spread into my lymph glands.
Onwards and upwards
Jamie had an operation to remove the affected glands and started a course of radiotherapy treatment. ‘To be honest it didn’t affect me too much. The restoration took my mind off it a bit and gave me something positive to work towards.’
Cracking on with the 2002, he refitted the drivetrain and turned towards the interior and exterior finishing touches. To replace the knackered old seats, upgraded front ones were sourced from an E30 325i Sport, and rears from an E24 635CSI. ‘Jaymic BMW were great in sourcing parts,’ he says. ‘But some bits like the rear bumper are ridiculous money in the UK, so I got them from America. Minilite wheels are quite common on this car, but I saw what I thought was an original Turbo set on ebay and with time running out, bought them.’ He holds one up, demonstrating the problem: five stud, as opposed to the 2002’s four-stud pattern. ‘You can change them, lots of people do. I was thinking of upgrading the brakes at some point, so at some point they will go on.’ A full stainless steel exhaust system was constructed by a specialist exhaust company. ‘I’m not too happy with how it was built to tell you the truth,’ he says. ‘It’s developed a crack on the manifold, I think because it runs under the engine and they’ve pulled the exhaust to fit it rather than build it to fit the car.’
Final tweaking took a while as he fitted and set-up the ‘magic eye’ needed for the electronic fuel injection system’s trigger wheel. Then it was off to a rolling road for a tune-up. ‘It made 150bhp and 139mph. I was happy with that.’
The final touches were the decals, produced by Allfix in Ipswich. ‘Even though it has the Turbo look, I didn’t want to dress it up as something it isn’t. But I still wanted those intimidating decals, so it’s got BMW and 2002 instead.’
A blown future
‘It’s had a really good reaction, people love it,’ says Jamie. ‘As does my missus, although the little one thinks it’s not very comfortable and gets too hot.’ Now that the car is finally complete Jamie feels it’s
definitely worth it and is able to enjoy the 2002’s improved performance, and fuel economy. ‘We have a caravan on the coast and the road there is quite nice, 30, 40, 70, 40, 30, you’re not constantly hammering it at 70mph, and the 2002 is in its element. It’s a good 120 miles there and back, but even driving hard it’ll do it on £10 in fuel.’
Health-wise Jamie’s not quite yet in remission, but definitely on the road to recovery. ‘Fingers crossed,’ he says, raising both hands. ‘My dad would have been so proud of the car, and even more so of its appearance in Practical Classics.’
So, what’s next? He points up to a BMW 2002 Turbo picture on the wall of his workshop. ‘That is my inspiration,’ he says. ‘I’ll enjoy the car as is for a while, and then it’ll be going blown.’
Once that final transformation is complete, East Anglians should look out for Jamie’s lairy replica worrying their tailgates and those special decals in their rear mirrors. In memory of Steve Rose.