A bright red example with subtle BMW Motorsport striping went under the hammer at the Creative Rides auction in Johannesburg on Thursday for a staggering R3 million. Bidding had started at R1 million.
Only 210 of these rare South African creations were ever built and Lead Auctioneer Joff van Reenen said it was the only matching numbers 333i that the auction house had ever sold.
Its final price was almost triple the R1.255 million paid for a 333i during a Creative Rides auction held in March 2023.
But that wasn't the only iconic E30 model to fetch over a bar in this most recent auction on Thursday. A pristine 1991 BMW 325i S Evo2 went under the hammer for R1,360,000.
The 333i was created because the first-generation M3 was only engineered in left-hand drive guise, thus making it unavailable to South Africans.
Undeterred, BMW SA teamed up with Alpina in Germany to create a local solution and the end result saw the 3.2-litre straight-six engine from the BMW 733i being shoe-horned into the engine bay of the E30-generation 3 Series.
The engine took up so much space that customers were forced to choose between air conditioning and power steering.