New to the forum in the last day - '88 five-speed 190E 2.6 Signal Red/Palomino Tex, 73K miles. The following story might be of interest to some.

In August '86 I special ordered an '87 190E 2.6 with a five-speed manual transmission to replace my '84 2.3 five-speed. About a month later I read in Autoweek that MBNA decided to WITHDRAW the five-speed six cylinder models. I called my dealer with the report, and they said they had heard nothing. I suggested that they check. (Duh!!!). Sure enough, they called the next day and said no five speed and immediately offered me a five-speed 16V they had in stock at a substantial discount. I demurred. I wanted a six. I told them I'd wait until the '88 model year before I went BMW shopping. The '87 no five speed deal applied to the 260E and 300E, too, so if you ever run across a '87 M103 five-speed, it's probably gray market.

In August '87 they called and said a five speed 2.6 would be available, so I placed my order, but the next available slot wasn't until October. The car was built in December and delivered to me in February.

Five-speed 2.3s were delivered to dealers on "allocation". In other words, dealers had to accept, say 5 percent of their orders as five-speeds whether they wanted them or not. In general, dealers didn't like them because they were slow sellers, however, MBZ had gone to the trouble of certifying M103 five-speed models to US and CA emission specs, so a compromise was worked out to make them available on a special order basis. Thus, customers had the option. Of course, a dealer could also order one for stock, but that was probably unlikely. If you found one in stock it was probably a customer special order who later backed out of the deal. Im not sure if the special order deal applied to 2.3s in '88. I had to special order my '84 2.3 because I could not find a red/palo five-speed when they first came out, so I just ordered one and waited the four or five months for delivery. In '84 five-speed 2.3s were on a five percent allocation as I recall.

I'm not sure if '86 300E five-speeds were on allocation or required a special order, but the special order requirments is why '88 and later five speed sixes are very rare. If you bought one used, '88 or later, it was probably special ordered by the original owner, and being as how it takes about four months to get a special order delivered, only the lunatic fringe die hard shifter enthusiasts were willing to wait that long.

An acquintence of mine was also in on the '87 deal as three of us got together and ground on the dealer for a $100K three car deal - five speed 190E 2.6, five-speed 260E, and a 300E automatic. Only the 300E buyer got his car in '87.

My salesman was so jazzed about five-speeds that about the time my car was delivered he was talking about getting one out of Texas on a dealer trade where the customer had backed out, but I don't recall if that ever came to pass.

Duke