Help me fund the repair for my first car.

I bought my first car, this 2001 BMW Z3 3.0i, hardly a week ago. It was up for a good price and it seemed to be in good condition after we had got it inspected. The lady who owned it before I did had it repaired after a front-end collision (not much more info than that). She sold it supposedly because she needed a bigger car.

When I got it, I got it for about $7k. It's my first car, and everything I ever wanted in a car. My dad showed me how to work the stick in it, and I had a lot of fun with the car. I had all kinds of plans to go drive to my mom's a few states over by the time summer comes around. I got really attached to the car; I thought it looked great, it drove great, it was just a fun car. But then, less than a week later, I took the car out on the freeway for the first time. I downshifted as I was decelerating, 5th to 4th, and suddenly the wheels locked up. The whole car just made a really nasty noise and I pulled it over immediately. Trying to get the car started was a no-go. The clutch wouldn't disengage, and even if you could get the car started, it would do its damnedest to stall itself out. The car was dead.

We got it towed to the ONLY mechanic nearby that was willing to repair this old Bimmer, and I waited to hear from them, hoping for the best. The rest of that day was pretty miserable, but my friend was there with me for the whole thing, so that helped.

Now we come to today. I woke up this morning to a message from my mechanic, and they had found problems with the engine I didn't even know about. I could go into specifics, but to keep it short, either my "moneyshift" had killed the engine, or a bad clutch in the car killed it. I personally think I killed it because I didn't really know how downshifting worked, but both the mechanic and my friends and family think the lady that owned it before me had an amateur mechanic repair it, and the clutch was reassembled poorly. Doesn't really matter, because at the end of the day, the repair for the whole car came out to about $11,000 to replace the engine and clutch assembly.

Pictured: One example of the damage done to my engine. One of the valves in Cylinder 2 has collided with the piston, and now this piston has no compression.

I've been pretty obsessed with Z3's as a whole, and I got the privilege of owning and driving one for a brief period... Three days. The lemon law does not cover used cars in my state, my insurance doesn't cover repairs, there's genuinely no other options I have. Initially, I opened this GoFundMe to pay off the mechanic to fix it, but I decided to instead use the money to help fund repairs I'll be doing myself. I really don't want to send this car to the scrapyard and still get left with the loan payment - for a broken car. But I had one last hope: Crowdfunding the repair. If anyone looking at this listing knows what I'm going through, or just wanna help a fella out, I appreciate any and all donations made towards saving this car. Thank you.

All of the money donated will be going into car repairs, which I'll be doing myself. I'll find some way to immortalize the donators that helped save the car, possibly put some kind of decal that lists all the donators or something like that.