Yeah engine hoist is a must of course. On the E30 and all BMW's from that era it's generally quite convenient as they have rather huge and square engine bays. We usually assembled the clutch and transmission and cable tree to the engine and then lifted it into the transmission tunnel at an angle and then down and back onto the attachment points on the front axle mount.

All in all with an M20 engine it's not that big of a deal. As I've stated in a previous part of this blog by the end of the first car we were down to 4 hrs engine out and back in :).

If you have anything larger than an M20 such as an S38 (3.6L M5 straight six engine) it is more sensible to put the front axle onto some solid base and put the engine with the transmission on that, fix it to the mounts and then lower the entire car down onto the front axle mount. That way you do it like they did at the factory and that's a pretty elegant way of installation but with the M20 you can usually just assemble it, lower it down and watch for the shift stick assembly which sometimes will be in the way of the transmission (happened to us and took us about 1 hour to figure out:).