20 Year Old E39, How Bad Is This Idea?

Matt82 said:
What happened with your old 530 in the end? Last time I remember you posting about it was when youd been to look at or test drive an F10.
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I still have it - I keep meaning to do something useful with it, its currently SORN. I never sold it when I replaced it almost 7 years ago now with an F10 as it didn't seem worth it and as an E39 enthusiast, it's still a car I love. I now have a large double garage so a project for summer is to get it all immaculate again. Part of me wishes it was an M5 so I actually had a reason to keep it all mint, but there we go. I've had it 14 years now :eek:

But 7 years ago I finally got fed up of running it as my main car. It was a case of what could go wrong this month? And invariably, something always did. A funny noise here, a vibration there, I felt like I was always ploughing cash into it to keep it running properly and the reward for this was a very nice but old car.

So, in early 2014 I replaced it with a 2010 F10 530d SE. I ran this for 2 and a half years before replacing it with a 12 month old F10 530d M Sport (The car I wanted in the first place but at that point couldn't afford).

Interestingly, I did a whole life cost comparison between my first F10 and my E39 and they both worked out at about 50p a mile all in. The F10 never cost a penny in repairs - but cost many pennies in depreciation. But the E39 cost many pennies in repairs, meaning that in the end they ended up costing about the same to run.

Moving from the E39 to the F10 meant I went from one repair bill a month to zero repair bills since 2014. I am astounded as to how reliable both of my F10's have been, even though they are much newer cars. I pay for the BMW warranty but have yet to make a claim on it with my current car, which I've now had for 4.5 years. I wouldn't imagine you'll be able to repeat that by buying a bottom of the market 10 year old F10 and I'd expect to have to budget for repairs on that, too, but I'd rather be fixing an F10 as a main car than an E39.

The E60 can, of course, go away and never return. Nasty things :p

The E39 now is a car for enthusiasts who appreciate what is arguably the best sport saloon BMW have ever made. For 20k a car I wouldn't have one for free, let alone pay for one. It's just not the car for that anymore. The design is 25 years old.

Mine is a 'reliable' petrol one not a complex first generation common-rail turbodiesel. The diesel ones are not even that fuel efficient - years and years ago my Dad ran an E39 530d whilst I had my E39 530i and I regularly drove it and found that it was at most about 7mpg better on average than my 530i. Not worth it.
 
[TW]Fox said:
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Interestingly, I did a whole life cost comparison between my first F10 and my E39 and they both worked out at about 50p a mile all in. The F10 never cost a penny in repairs - but cost many pennies in depreciation. But the E39 cost many pennies in repairs, meaning that in the end they ended up costing about the same to run.

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Which is a pretty nice trade, avoiding time spent getting those repairs and diagnoses done! Often in that order I expect.
 
[TW]Fox said:
Interestingly, I did a whole life cost comparison between my first F10 and my E39 and they both worked out at about 50p a mile all in. The F10 never cost a penny in repairs - but cost many pennies in depreciation. But the E39 cost many pennies in repairs, meaning that in the end they ended up costing about the same to run.
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Whilst I've no doubt your maths is correct, most people who run old BMWs don't run them like you. They'll live with anything that isn't an MOT failure and fix themselves anything that prevents the car moving or fails an MOT. In those cases, the cost of running an old E39 would likely be a lot less than what it cost you. Of course, I totally understand not wanting to do that - I wouldn't want to either, but some people do.
 
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Bangernomics, there is always a element of risk. I personal have done it in the past and that car still runs around my city. As long as your handy with a spanner and willing to do a lot of jobs yourself as there will be a few. £1500 on a car for a year or two It’s cheap motoring. I know someone who still runs around in an e39 530d still pulls well and is well looked after.
 
Thank you all for your input. After further research, the two stand out issues with automatic E39s appear to be random gearbox failures, there seems to be little correlation with service life or how hard theyre used, they can go pop at random. Secondly the rust basically sounds inevitable and looking at where the green car has issues already at least one part seems catastrophic, so sadly E39s are off the list unless something amazing comes up.

An E90 generation touring is now next on the list, just need to find something nice.
 
SoliD said:
Its a dog carrying commuting tool, why do you need something that does it for you? Mk4 mondeo with 2.0 tdci is perfect for your needs, i got one 4 years ago for being the load lugger that I don't have to worry where I park it or what goes in it.
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I know that makes absolute sense but I wanted the car to be "interesting". If I see a Mondeo on the road, I dont really notice it, if I see a E39 I recognise it as something cool, I know thats sad and largely pointless but its something I want in a car... but sod chasing rust repairs endlessly, cant be dealing with that!
 
Cookeh said:
My 26 year old £1500 estate has cost £82pm in maintenance (including purchase) since I bought it two months shy of three years ago. I do all the work myself, which has helped keep costs down. I average 14k miles pa. My argument would be that if you are capable of doing some basic DIY, and the car appears to be in reasonable condition and previously well maintained then it might be worth a punt. Mine was not well maintained in the 3 years before I bought it, so I needed to invest more in it maintenance wise than I perhaps would have with a different example.

Alternatively, if you don't care about the £1500 capital, then buy the car you want and just run it straight into the ground.
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Id be expecting all work on the car to be carried out at home, my cars go to garages for tyres, MOTs and fuel but I cant do anything with the bodywork so its a no go
 
[TW]Fox said:
No such thing. Might as well get the E39 after all, at least it will be good until it goes wrong :D
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TBF fox at 1500 he may aswell take a chance, i had a six pot quite similar to this and still miss it now.

silverblackroof.jpg
 
[TW]Fox said:
I still have it - I keep meaning to do something useful with it, its currently SORN. I never sold it when I replaced it almost 7 years ago now with an F10 as it didn't seem worth it and as an E39 enthusiast, it's still a car I love. I now have a large double garage so a project for summer is to get it all immaculate again. Part of me wishes it was an M5 so I actually had a reason to keep it all mint, but there we go. I've had it 14 years now :eek:
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I remember the post you made when you upgraded from the Mondeo, cant believe that was 14 years ago :eek:

[TW]Fox said:
Interestingly, I did a whole life cost comparison between my first F10 and my E39 and they both worked out at about 50p a mile all in. The F10 never cost a penny in repairs - but cost many pennies in depreciation. But the E39 cost many pennies in repairs, meaning that in the end they ended up costing about the same to run.
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That doesnt surprise me, cars are always going to cost money and theyll cost double/triple again if its something you actually like or want to keep nice. We ran a TT tdi for the last few years, i think it was 5/6 years old when we got it, my other half commuted 50-60 miles a day in that for a long time and as a newer car (for me) there was an almost zero repair outlay which was definitely a contrast to my usual approach of buy something old, pile money in and then expect the world from it.

That mk4 Golf I used to have eventually retired on 267k miles. In the final year of its life did five trackdays, it had the usual work done when it was needed and was an absolute trooper

[TW]Fox said:
The E60 can, of course, go away and never return. Nasty things :p
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They never did anything for me, if I see one on the road I dont really notice them, they usually look haggered or chavved

[TW]Fox said:
The E39 now is a car for enthusiasts who appreciate what is arguably the best sport saloon BMW have ever made. For 20k a car I wouldn't have one for free, let alone pay for one. It's just not the car for that anymore. The design is 25 years old.
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Thats the part that grabs my attention, their ranking as the top saloon at the time and a design that was never the same after, but it is now a 25 year old design, and as much as id love one I couldnt deal with the rust, a real shame as Id loved to have been behind the wheel of a classic
 
wedrum said:
TBF fox at 1500 he may aswell take a chance, i had a six pot quite similar to this and still miss it now.

silverblackroof.jpg
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That's stunning, however I did more research and what I thought was a damaged plasticsill cover is actually dirty great hole. for that reason I'm out
 
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