Why? In theory, things like glass and trim aren't required to be in the car and would be exempt as a result. They're essentially considered "driver comfort" like switchgear, dashboard, etc.
Does that particular clause get exercised much? Well, it depends on how much car you want to bring. Bringing a 1991 Ford Escort Pony? Nobody is going to care in BS Inspection. However, if you buy a "crashed" Boxster or E46 or E60 (cough cough) or S197 Shelby and want to rationalize that you can make a $2500 Copart purchase into a Lemons car, expect to follow the letter of the law. That generally falls under Rule 4.1.1 and the all-powerful Rules 1.1 & 2.4:
Dang Ol' Rulebook wrote:4.1.1 Lame-Ass Rationalizations: Cars that “should be” worth $500 don’t count; cars that “were worth $500” before you spent another $2000 to fix them don’t count; cars you’ve owned for 20 years and spent more than $500 on during that time don’t count; “it would have been worth $500 if it didn’t already have a cage” doesn’t count. Five hundred dollars means five hundred frickin’ dollars!
Dang Ol' Rulebook wrote:1.1 Organizers Decisions: Organizers’ decisions are final. If you don’t like it, tough. Get your own race.
Dang Ol' Rulebook wrote:2.4 Whiner Eligibility. Whiners are not eligible to compete. If you believe that you might be a whiner, please check with a domestic partner, guardian, or healthcare professional before getting the rest of your team kicked the hell out of the race.
To the OP's point, an E60 BMW is gonna get sweated pretty hard. That's A LOT of car for Lemons and especially if you're new, you can expect that you're not gonna be given much leash until (and if) you prove you're not gonna pinball off other people's cars with 3500 pounds and probably 250+ horsepower under your foot. I would recommend you bring pictures, document your parts reclamation in pretty minute detail, and give the car a really good theme.
You're very likely to end up in Class A and unless you're a BMW motorsports shop preparing a car with very experienced endurance drivers, you're not going to be competitive. That's a learning-curve problem, nothing personal. So if you get some laps—it's hard to say ahead of time if you will without seeing the car in detail, which is why we do BS Inspection at every race onsite—say "Yeah, I figured as much" and then go run the car and have fun. So long as you pass tech, you get to put your car on track all weekend and have fun. If you don't really care too deeply about the standings—and your first 2 to 42 races should be spent learning and not caring about lap times or position, honestly—it's not going to drastically affect any part of your fun.
All that said, if you want some opinions on it pre-race, shoot me an email. We have our first E60 (actually an E63 645i) coming to race this weekend so I'll be curious what their story is.
Slightly off-topic: TheEngineer is right that there seems to be a sweet spot of performance from the early 2000s before CANbus was widely adopted (except Mercedes, lol). People are already finding that late-model cars (that term used pretty loosely here) got mechanically complicated in a hurry. At least it's not an Audi?
Eric Rood
Everything Bagel, 24 Hours of Lemons
eric@24hoursoflemons.com