Win a Manual-Swapped 1999 BMW 540i Touring (E39)

What you're looking at

German Motor Designs, a European specialty shop on Colfax Ave in Clifton, New Jersey, is giving away a 1999 BMW 540i Touring with roughly 85,000 miles on it. The Official Rules describe the prize plainly as "a 1999 BMW 540 with approximately 85,000 miles"; the shop's own headline calls it the E39 wagon build you've always wanted.

The headline modification is the one that matters — a manual swap. Beyond the third pedal, the shop lists a body kit, fresh paint, wheels and coilovers, with the work running as an episodic build series on their YouTube channel rather than presented as a finished car with a spec sheet attached. That is the honest state of it: at last look the build was still underway, with body-kit and suspension work in progress, and the artwork on the giveaway page is a rendering of the planned car rather than a photograph of the finished one. Gear count, paint code, wheel and coilover brands, and interior spec have not been published.

Why an E39 wagon with three pedals is the interesting part

The E39 is the generation most people mean when they say BMW got the 5 Series right: hydraulic steering, a chassis with real feel, and in 540i form a 4.4-liter V8 that turns a family hauler into something genuinely quick. The Touring body added the part enthusiasts wanted, and BMW promptly withheld the part they wanted most — in the US, the 540i Touring was automatic-only. The six-speed was a sedan option. Every three-pedal E39 wagon in America is a conversion somebody paid for.

That is why the swap is the whole story here, and why the number makes sense. Unmodified manual Tourings have been changing hands in the mid-teens to low twenties; the value in this car is the labor stacked on top of a well-chosen donor. It is also why a finished example is worth waiting for — a wagon like this is only as good as the quality of the conversion and how sorted it is when the keys change hands.

The fine print worth knowing

Entries run on a straight ratio: the rules grant 200 entries for every whole dollar spent in the shop, pre-tax and excluding shipping, which means anything in the store counts — a $15 keychain is 3,000 entries. Dedicated entry packs start at $60 for 12,000 entries and run to $250 for 50,000, and the math on those bundles matches the published ratio exactly.

There is a free route. The rules take a hand-printed 3"x5" card mailed to a PO Box in Macedon, New York, and each card counts for 2,000 entries — the equivalent of a $10 purchase. It has to be postmarked by September 30, 2026 and received by October 5. The exact wording, including everything that has to be written on the card, is in the free-entry section below; read it before you address the envelope.

The rest of the honest bits: ViralSweep LLC administers the drawing, which happens on or about October 6, 2026. The car is delivered "AS IS" with no warranty, and there is no cash alternative — so a $40,000 ARV lands on your tax return as income and that bill comes out of your own pocket. Entry is limited to US residents 18 or older, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. One housekeeping note: the "Official Rules" link on the homepage points to a page that doesn't load — the live rules sit at germanmotordesigns.com/pages/official-rule.

And the platform caveats you would want on any 27-year-old German V8 wagon: cooling systems are consumable, the 540i's V8 uses plastic timing-chain guides that are a well-known weak point, and the Touring's self-leveling rear suspension is expensive when it lets go. Fresh paint and new wheels do not change any of that.