Modern BMW's. You gota laugh.

It does mean facelift. It’s just a weird way of saying it.

Less modern car content. More cool/old cars please

Indeed, couldn't agree more . 

When you hear marketing stuff like that, it's another  great reason to stick with ''cool/old cars''.  

It does make me laugh that people say stick with old cars as it was simpler.

I'll just say a few things here; Long Story short; they never were. Read on.

Ford Transit; Try differentiating those. Ford in the Transit story doesn't do it by Marks as the "Mark 1" and "2" are considered the same (i.e a Mark 1) by many people; they had the same underpinnings. Let's not even start on the "Smiley face" Transits! In the Transit story, they refer to them as a model year change. So a "Mark 2" mid 70s Transit is called a Transit 1976.5. No, really!

If you think about it, Ford really had a theme here. Look at the Granada Mark 1 and 2, which were basically the same. The Mondeo was the same. Many call my MkIV a Mark III, with Auto Express being one example); the MkI and II aren't differiated by people; It wasn't just BL who loved to keep models going for as long as they could. I'll come back to this theme with Ford however.

Mk1 and Mk2 Golfs; Facelift was apparent in that. Small lights to big lights. Smaller bumpers to big bumpers.

Toyota; They are a nightmare to keep a track off. Google the 70s Carina Coupe. The TA12 had different lights which I think was then called the TA18, or at least via the VIN.


BMW: LCIs have been around LOOONNG before the E90 generation. The E30 in my short was an early Chrome bumper, and the LCI in the late 90s basically dechromed a lot of it and changed a few engines. Off went the 323i engine (which was probably a little meh) and out came a gem of an engine that would now make a desirable E30. The 318iS.

A guy I knew had an F reg E30 IIRC on a non-LCI body. Yup, the car was a good old fashioned ringer, where the story got worse (it wasn't stolen but that pre-LCI body was marked as scrap via some checks; we suspect some assessors were very dodgy with that kind of a deal; the VIN had very obviously been tampered with on closer inspection). Thankfully, it was when E30s were cheap, so that shell went to the crusher. It did cost the guy a lot of time to strip the car.

Mercedes: W124 had IIRC 2 facelifts. Inclusion of Sacco panels to a smaller grille and taking on the 'E-Class' name as we know today, where many of the serious engine and 'box changes arrived just before the 'E-Class' facelift, including the 5-speed auto 'box, and the 'harness killer' engines; yup, the ones with the £500 wiring harness bill waiting. That's one reason why it's hard to know which ones are harness killers in that range.

Escort. I'll only mention the MkIV here, so the 85-91 facelift/generation. Remember that was a heavy facelift from the "Mark 3".

You have the
-early spec - red pattern interior with earlier clocks
-89 Spec - Later grey interior down to the clocks, but an early exterior bar the later badges; This I suspect was no doubt due to the timings coming in
-90 Spec - Full facelift with Cosworth-Esque bumpers, spoilers & wheels, along with the change from K-Jetronic to Ford's EEC IV EFI setup. In the RS Turbo circles, a lot of those parts are now coveted and as a result, expensive. This also tied into the gazillion limited editions that came out around 1990 as well ; Who remember the Escort Eclipse?

That's for the XR3is and RS Turbos. I'm sure it's probably as convoluted on the Sierra Cosworths along with the Fiestas.

Admittedly, a lot of these I only know as I came to buy the cars and wanted to know what I was/should be looking at. With the Escorts, my dad had a Mercury Grey '89 spec XR3i and I wanted the spec of his car in an RS Turbo. That and the 4th Protocol had a Mk3 coloured Mk4 in the film, most likely down to Ford trying to promote the newer model as early as it possibly could. That size of car was a very good seller for Ford.

Another one comes to mind with the Mini-Metro to the Metro between the 80s and early 90s where you can bet the other Austin-Rover products were part of that too. My dad had a facelift but not a fully facelifted Metro Turbo. You used to see more back I've not seen one like his for years now which was a later body but an earlier spec (D986 XEG was the reg).

Got to laugh at modern BMWs. We have to laugh at strange revisions! They're all as bad as each other! The irony is that the Miura in the OP's avatar had around 3 or 4 lifecycle updates.

Overly complicated or ignorance is bliss?

Basically, it was never any different . Anyway, I'll put the anorak back onto the coat hanger.

Excellent but was it parlance back then or was it a More recent term?

I'm finding all this triple-times worse with mountain bikes. Find one you like on ebay, then try and find its original spec and you have to know the exact year. If the colour scheme is similar to another year, it gets confusing again.

If we are looking at USP's and marketing speak, then you can have a pretty good laugh looking back at old cars. I remember ABS appearing on Cavalier boot lids, SIPS on Volvos, Lambda badges on the grills of Volvos. So that's cars where the special additions were better brakes, side impact bars and an oxygen sensor for emissions - whoop whoop!

I suspect the OP has a bit of brand beef and the next crack will be about indicators.....

Please don’t. We don’t want even more negativity about modern cars. Just positivity about older ones.

Sorry, it just irked me. Pennance of cool headlights

Indeed. Possibly not the right term. I could have used relationshop breaker; A friend of mine almost lost his GF to owning a very dodgy E280.

You probably know this.

The W124s with the following engines had harness issues

2.0 Twin-Cam M111
2.3 Twin-Cam M111
2.8 Twin-cam M104
3.2 Twin-Cam M104

The twin-cam diesels (OM604, 605 and the legendary OM606) had harness issues yes, but it didn't cause as many issues.

None of these engines were fitted into the 4Matics, so they ironically with more 'complexity' were actually safer choices as they kept the older engines.

Basically, Mercedes used a biodegreable harness for a few years. With age and heat, the insulation broke down and shorted the components out.

What's the name of your firm? It's good to know who can repair these. At least there are other choices besides Mercedes now.

I almost bought one of these cars twice, including the aforementioned E280, and a C36 AMG, for near no money. Mercedes wanted £700 for the E280 harness, and £1.2k for the C36 item, so I ended up passing on both.

Given that was some time ago, to misquote Patrick from the long forgotten show called Coupling "Ouch"

It's time we had a shot of one of these beauties. Yup, I'm aware this is done to an E500 spec, and not really one truly being an estate. But what a cool thing: