Mat Armstrong discovers non-running BMW F80 M3 he bought was stolen and shortly after the police pay him a visit

After buying a non-running BMW F80 M3 on the cheap in a bid to make a quick flip, Mat Armstrong was paid a visit by the police and it was a very close shave.

Having spent the majority of adulthood under the hood of some of the fastest cars in the UK, Mat usually knows his vehicles inside out.

But in the case of this BMW F80 M3, it took the keen eye of a ‘nerd’ in his comments to point out that this car wasn’t all as it seemed.

So much so that the police recently arrived at his garage to seize the vehicle, but it was too late.

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Police visited Mat Armstrong to seize his new BMW F80 M3

It’s the trick of the trade that he works in, but Mat has mastered the art of buying crashed cars and selling them on for profits once they’re back up and running.

He hoped the same would happen with this BMW F80 M3, which was bought as a non-runner.

As one of only five Yas Marina Blue M3s in the UK, $30,000 sounded like a bargain well struck.

But after facing some issues with the engine, it was found that the car, despite matching the right VIN numbers, had been reported stolen in 2023.

The police were informed, and as the process rolled on, the local constituency turned up at his facility to impound the car.

The police informed Mat that he would need to hand the keys over without being refunded, which would have meant the $30,000 fee would have been for nothing.

However, the stolen car wasn’t there when they turned up.

A solution came just in the nick of time

That’s because, luckily, Mat was given a full refund from the dealer just hours before the police came, and the money was safely returned to him.

“[The police] literally said they were going to come earlier, but they had a call or something… so it was lucky [the BMW] went on that day,” Mat said in his YouTube upload.

In this case, the police would then liaise with the online dealership to track down the vehicle and its previous owner to find out more about its backstory.

Other people have faced harder times with stolen BMWs, though.

At the moment, the YouTuber can’t catch much of a break, as his recent Bugatti Chiron rebuild project also faced some huge difficulties.

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