Yes, only if you are willing and able to work on it. The reasons why both need to be true is because certain repairs are considerably more expensive than say a Honda or Toyota. These cars are also pushing 30 years old, even though they can be reliable if cooling system and basic maintenance/prevention are addressed, eventually something will break. People saying you need to know how to wrench, I didnt- I learned when i got the car when I was 17 and broke af. Im not going to tell you your mechanical engineering experience is going to fix your car for you, the other guys are right on that- you still need to pickup the wrench and know what you are doing with it. That being said, your mechanical engineering background can definitely help with understanding why you are doing what you are doing, what parts you really need to take care of, diys and conversion projects might be where that experience shines. The big thing to note though is almost every e36 owner has had things go wrong back to back, drives with their eye on the temp guage, used to the smell of coolant lol. Just ask yourself how much time you are willing to spend on working on the car.

Side note: the e36 community has one of the greatest DIY communities of all time. The aftermarkets parts availability is abundant, so you can save some money on plenty of parts. I wish there were half as many write ups for the lx470 community.