m6

im thinking of buying an m6, im 21 and know i shouldnt. someone tell me to buy it. it does 10 mpg and is in alpine white, which i dislike in a 6 series. on the positive hand it is £3500 and has 6 months tax and mot. 183 000 miles with full service history although not bmw. 3 owners, 17" bbs split rims. bodywork is average. its an 85 with oldstyle seats etc. what should i do?

In my view, unless you are very lucky,  £3500 is likely to be the price you would pay for a restoration project. 

Bodywork that looks average is likely to be hiding expensive problems.  183000 miles is getting to the sort of level where expensive rebuilds are on the cards. 10 mpg is horrific - something is wrong. I get about 16 - 17 overall and 20 odds on a decent  80 mph (keeping it down to 80 mph is much more difficult than in any other car I've ever had though).

17" BBS split rims are smart and alpine white's OK.

If you have £3500 to spend walk away.  If you have a sensible  budget to do a rolling restoration on top of the purchase price then it is an awesome car, but you aren't going to get away with spending £3500 on it. 

ML generally buy in there cars for very little and sell for a lot. My friend Ross bought a very nice m6 for a stonking £17.5K from the owner. Previously ML were trying to sell the car for him at £25K. He was only going to get £15k. Again this is what i have herd. I however think ML's are fantastic. They are exspensive, but you know exactly what you are getting.

As for the cheap M6 just remember that an M6 is a £45k car new and costs as much as an £60k car now to run. There is no such thing as a cheap 635csi and an M635 is infinantly more exspensive as that engine if it needs a timing chain is £2k+. Then you have all the usual six rusty bits which need doing if you can see them and cost a fortune.