Ray Sterbens is cleaning his Malaga Red 2002 tii when I arrive at his house in Huntington Beach.

As we hang around his three-car garage—which also contains an M635CSi—he tells me the story about how his wife borrowed the tii for a trip to college while they were still dating.

“You let her borrow your tii?” I ask incredulously, noticing how gently the man caresses his car with a soft cloth.

“Let me tell the story,” he says, continuing with the tale and the caressing.

He lent her the car, and after three days and one of those intense rainstorms that sometimes hit Southern California, his future wife brought it back.

No worries, she told him, I covered it with the tarp like you told me to. Relax, not a drop of rain got on your car.

“The car is all shiny,” Ray says, “and then I open the trunk and there’s the tarp, all sopping wet and crumpled up.”

He swallows hard at the memory.

“I mean, she just put the dripping wet thing into my trunk and left it there for days!”

Knowing Ray, the wet tarp incident must have put a tremendous strain on the budding relationship. It’s a sign of true love that he overcame the shock and ended up happily married (with two kids, mind you) to the tarp-wielding wife.

All that happened a few decades ago, and the maroon-colored 2002 tii hasn’t needed the slightest cosmetic surgery in the thirty-seven—count ’em, 37!—years since.

“Actually,” says Ray, wiping a dust particle off the meticulously clean fender, “I had to fix some rust in the driver’s side door some time ago, but other than that the car has never needed restoration of any kind.”

Original and complete, from the antenna on down

To find a 1973 round-taillight tii in Malaga is always a treat for any 2002 nut like me. But leaning on the hood—oops! sorry, Ray!—of one in all its splendid, genuine glory takes your breath away, especially when you’re talking about a car that looks like it could have rolled straight out of the showroom. How often does one find a completely unrestored beauty like this, and in the hands of its first and only owner? I mean, even the antenna is spotless!

“And it has this red little top!” Ray exclaims, pointing out the Bakelite ball that crowns the aerial. “That alone is worth a lot among collectors!”

In 1973, Sterbens had just outgrown his teenage years and scraped the money together for a cool ride. He bought the car new from 4J-BMW in Huntington Beach for a tad more than five-and-a-half thou, and he still has the original window sticker, all the warranty papers and even the Bic pen he got when he purchased the automobile.

“They threw in the CocoMats for free,” Ray adds with his wide, friendly smile, “and look at ’em now!”

Look at ’em, indeed. They’re so clean and fresh, I wouldn’t dare wipe my feet on those babies. 37-year-old CocoMats, like new. It’s as if Ray drove in socks all those years.

“I used to have a muscle car back in those days,” he remembers. Being the practical man that he is, he traded it for a Volkswagen Beetle. “But what I really wanted was a Porsche, a 993.”

As in so many cases, the Porsche dream was beyond the aspiring young man’s financial reach. He made do with the Beetle until a friend took him for a spin in a Ford Cortina, hooking Ray on speed and handling.

“I knew I wanted a BMW then, and I thought a 2002 would be a fine machine. But when I got to the dealer, the guy says to me, ‘Ray, you don’t want a 2002. You need a tii!’”

Sometimes all you need to be happy is a prophetic car dealer who recognizes a real car nut when he sees one.