Looking to buy a BMW 525M 2010 above. Anybody have one here

Shakeel

Shakeel

Shakeel

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Looking to buy the above car on a 2010 plate or above. It will be my first expensive purchase. It will also be my first automatic car as I have had a manual for the past 8 years.

Just looking for any advise from anybody on common faults or any others thoughts. The only not so good thing I've heard so far is that automatic gearboxes are expensive if they go wrong.

I have upto 14k to spend.

Thanks
 
You are not going to get one of these.worth buying for anything like 14k.

A good 525d M Sport is more than 20k.

You would be better settling for a previous generation 3 series for this budget.
 
Thanks. I can stretch the budget to 16-17k if that help. When you say "a good 525m" what do you mean. As in it has been taken care of and not thrashed about?
 
Fox is correct - The cheapest petrol 5 Series (F10) on Autotrader is a 523i SE Auto for £16k with 90,000 miles.
 
I mean one that doesnt have 150k miles on it with a nice shiney steering wheel and a myriad of potential faults ready to bite you sold by Bobs Independant Ex-Fleet Junkers Incorporated.

These cars have only been out for just over 3 years - the oldest possible 525d M Sport is going to be a 60 plate car thats just over 3 years old. They simply have not depreciated enough yet to be available to people who want a nice one for a £14-17k budget.

It's very rare that they dip below £20k and when they do it's because it's a high mileage example for which you will struggle to purchase a warranty, or it's a very poor specification example, etc.

If your budget is £14k and you can stretch to £17k then in my opinion probably the only 2010 onwards 5 Series that you MIGHT be able to manage is something like an early 520d SE. Stretching your way into a potentially troublesome car is never particularly clever either.

If you really want a 5 Series then your £14k will buy you a reasonably nice previous generation E60. Not a care I am personally fond of but you might like it.

These cars are very complex and the bills can be eye watering. To really enjoy ownership at the very least you need to get yourself a nice example not a bottom of the barrel big miles cheapy. You used to be able to buy a nice big mileage 5 Series and look forward to reasonably satisfying ownership experience - I did that myself 8 years ago - but now such is the level of complexlity and the potential for issues (Remember, these cars have an 8 speed autobox, fibre electronics system which uses TCP/IP, diesel particular filters, high pressure injection system, etc etc) I simply couldn't recommend that.

Besides - when I bought a 4 year old big miles 5 Series Sport it was well under £10k which is rather different to spending £15k on the same thing today!

Honestly from your post I would strongly caution you against buying this model. Buy a nice E90 3 Series - you can get a 325d M Sport perhaps even a main dealer car for your budget quite easily. Yea it's not as good but rather a nice example of a decent car than a crap example of an exceptional one, right?

The facelift E90 has the same iDrive system as the F10 5 Series so you'll get some of the more modern features and the nicer interface from the newer 5 Series if you pick one of these. Look at a 58-11 plate for your budget. If its under 60k miles you can warranty it properly with BMW for about 500 quid a year, then you can enjoy the car.
 
[TW]Fox;26109049 said:
Besides - when I bought a 4 year old big miles 5 Series Sport it was well under £10k which is rather different to spending £15k on the same thing today!
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Out of interest what is your take on the difference between then and now? You purchased a 4 year old Sport 5-series for what was it, around £8k (iirc, forgive me, as you say it was a long time ago)?

The idea that a 2010 M Sport even with terrible spec and a far inferior engine to that which yours is, would be £8k, is laughable. :)
 
It's not far away now.

  • Using the Bank of England Inflation Calculator; £8k in 2006 is worth about £10k in 2012. Approx £10.5k adjusted for 2014.
  • When Fox bought his E39 it was previous generation model - E60's were out. So like-for-like you need to compare it against E60's.
  • Finding a 530 petrol model now is almost impossible. As it almost was when Fox was looking

Looking around there is a base option spec 530i SE for £8.5k or a 530d SE with Pro Nav, 58k miles for £11.5k.
 
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Find me an M-Sport model F10 for anything like that figure, mega miles or not. They are worth a lot more now inflation adjusted than they were then. There is a marked market difference, and i was interested in Fox's take on it thats all :)
 
If u buy a used BMW, u should be prepared and have atleast £1k put away for repairs. A fault on a BMW can easily cost £500 and some times more if unlucky with an expensive part that goes wrong.

This is why u see so many beat up BMW's around people blow their whole budget on the car and dont leave room for repairs. Also i heard the first generation of F10's were pretty faulty and spend a lot of time in the dealership getting fixed. I heard this from a friend cant confirm if it is true can anyone confirm this?
 
Jez said:
Find me an M-Sport model F10 for anything like that figure, mega miles or not. They are worth a lot more now inflation adjusted than they were then. There is a marked market difference, and i was interested in Fox's take on it thats all :)
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I'll tell you the answer to that. Or at least a MASSIVE part of the answer to that question.

The Euro.

8 years ago (or so) the Euro was worth around 0.63p, or roughly 1.6 Euro = £1.

Now though, you are looking at closer to 88 - 90p for a Euro, or 1.2 or thereabouts.

These cars are made in Germany, that use the Euro, so as we can buy less Euro for the pound, so the cost of European cars increases, for us. I mean, it's costing us around 40% more per Euro. So where a 530d MSport may have cost around £35k 8-10 years ago, it is now a £50k motor. So the depreciation starts at £50k, not £35k, so in 4 years, it's no wonder it's not down to £10 - 12k.
 
xs2man said:
So where a 530d MSport may have cost around £35k 8-10 years ago, it is now a £50k motor. So the depreciation starts at £50k, not £35k, so in 4 years, it's no wonder it's not down to £10 - 12k.
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This isn't really true at all. The 5 Series hasn't really increased in price that much at all, infact in real terms its probably cheaper.

We'll start with your £50k figure - its nothing like that. It lists at £43k and Broadspeed will set you up with a main dealer supplied 530d M Sport for £36k.

Now lets look at the price of a 530i/528i or similar across the last 15 years.

2001: 530i Sport, 231bhp with leather, Xenons and navigation was £38k list price. Discounts were not as significant back then but lets assume 10%.

So a 530i Sport with those options would have cost you £34k or so 13 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, in 2012 money thats.. £48k! To be honest thats optimistic too, I have the original purchase invoice for mine which has no navigation and that was £32k inc discounts.

So lets assume you want the same today. A 230ish bhp petrol 5 Series M Sport with leather, Xenons and nav.

Accoridng to you, loads more money.

In reality, a 528i M Sport with 245bhp, leather, Xenons and navigation is yours for a LIST price of £38k but a discounted price of £32k.

It has likely never been cheaper to buy a new 5 Series as it is right now.

Something else is holding F10 residual values up - they are IMHO crazy high. You want a decent 4 year old 530d F10 with good spec etc? You need at least £20k. For a 4 year old car! You want a 2012 M Sport? You'll need almost £30k for a car I've demonstrated you could order brand new right now for £36k!

They are really bonkers expensive, especially compared to the equivilent E Class or A6 which is generally noticeably cheaper.

It's really quite annoying for those of us who don't buy new cars but really rather good for those who bought a new one 2-3 years ago!
 
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[TW]Fox;26110862 said:
We'll start with your £50k figure - its nothing like that. It lists at £43k and Broadspeed will set you up with a main dealer supplied 530d M Sport for £36k.
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Lets start with MY 530d M-Sport. It WAS a £50k motor. List Price, including options, was something like £51,345 or something stupid like that. That was October / November last year, so I don't need you to tell me how much the list price of MY car is, as I have one, and so KNOW the list price once you put a few of the "can't live without" options on it. And true enough, the projected residual value in 4 years was around the £17-18k mark, which adjusted for dealer profit margin would be at LEAST £22k in the BMW forecourt.

The rest of what you are saying may well be true with regards to the 5 series, I dunno about past prices, I was just speculating. But according to your math (which I'm not saying is wrong here), we are actually getting our cars around 40% cheaper then, going by the exchange rate. As in the Germans are getting 40% less, due to exchange rate fluctuation? That does seem crazy.

With respect to the A6, residual values were coming in around the same as the 5 series when I was looking at them, the Merc E-Class was a different matter altogether though. A basic AMG E220CDI Estate, with metallic and Command (top nav) had a residual of a touch over £20k (This was on a car that listed £10k less of the 5 series I bought). Although I think that was more to sell the car, as the monthly payments as a result were a good £180 per month cheaper than the 5 series. If I had an extra 10 years on me, and didn't care about what I was driving, I would have bought one of them.
 
[TW]Fox;26110862 said:
Something else is holding F10 residual values up - they are IMHO crazy high.

They are really bonkers expensive, especially compared to the equivilent E Class or A6 which is generally noticeably cheaper.
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Every car review website and magazine rates the 5 above the A6 and E Class, which leads to higher demand and keeps used prices high.

This is proven when you look at the 5 GT. It's subjective looks and generally negative press mean that GT models costing more the 5 saloon new are cheaper to buy used, as there is no demand.

When the next 5 model comes out the focus will shift and used prices will drop.
 
Jez said:
Out of interest what is your take on the difference between then and now? You purchased a 4 year old Sport 5-series for what was it, around £8k (iirc, forgive me, as you say it was a long time ago)?

The idea that a 2010 M Sport even with terrible spec and a far inferior engine to that which yours is, would be £8k, is laughable. :)
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To put a bit more perspective, I bought a 2003 530d Sport with 83k on the clock in 2007 on pretty much it's fourth birthday for £10700. It had just had the scheduled service and had a reasonable spec - one issue was the airbag light was on which was resolved for £20. IIRC, the invoice that came with the car showed the car was around £34.5k new.

I did get a pretty exceptional deal at the time but still, if there was a 4 year old F10 530d Sport for that money, I'd be buying it.
 
Yeah that would be good.

I paid 18.5k for my 2010 F10 530d last week with 56k, it's an SE but decent spec.

Still not picked it up yet because of work :(
 
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