BMW and M Power Owners

Soldato
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I paid about £24k for my approved used F10 530d when it was a couple of months off 3 years old & 30k miles. Was a bit of a premium for an approved used but hasnt skipped a beat. Best car I have owned.
 
Man of Honour
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I paid about £24k for my approved used F10 530d when it was a couple of months off 3 years old & 30k miles. Was a bit of a premium for an approved used but hasnt skipped a beat. Best car I have owned.

Mine was 12 months old and 5k miles and not hugely more than that G30 is now. How times change!
 
Associate
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9 Mar 2004
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I would want radar cruise tbh, a deal breaker for me. Shame as it's otherwise a nice spec car.

Radar cruise has been the surprise hit of my new car to be honest. I never used the standard cruise in my F36 as the constant need to fiddle with the speed meant it was just as easy to use my foot. I did a round trip from Cheltenham to Oxford yesterday and pottering along the A40 where for long stretches its single carriageway with little hope of an overtake and decided to give it plus the driver assistance stuff a fair shot. I was very impressed with it, although I must admit I've not yet dared to see if it can cope with a vehicle coming to a complete stop in front of me. I can see it getting well used on the more monotonous stretches of road. The steering assistance does feel a little odd at times as it didnt always take the line I would naturally choose through some corners but in general I could just lightly rest my hands on the wheel and let it do its thing.
 
Man of Honour
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So strange how it is standard on a Golf yet Audi/Mercedes/BMW still charge for it

Well it's not that strange but still... annoying should we say

To be somewhat fair it is a much better system than you get as standard on a Golf - it will effectively drive for you at various speeds (ie, it steers as well and negotiates queues for you). However I'd still far rather than option to just have the adaptive cruise without all the extra stuff, as the extra bits are a fun gimmick in my experience whereas the adaptive cruise part of it is genuinely useful.
 
Soldato
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Thanks for comments

could it be that things have actually changed though? Inflation on big ticket items has been obscene since covid.

A sub 1 year 530d is now >£40k from what I can see. Should that deter me from getting a decent 4 year old one now for £25k, unless the expectation is that this will reverse in the next few months?
 
Man of Honour
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A sub 1 year 530d is now >£40k from what I can see

I just can't understand why as you can buy a new one for less than that.

When I priced up ordering my car new, it came to about £40k after discount.

When I price up ordering a brand new G30 530d new with an even better specification, it still comes to £40k after discount. 5 years later...

Interestingly you can buy a year old 330d for under £30k, which seems very reasonable. It's also not exactly miles off a 5 Series in terms of size and is arguably a slightly more modern car..
 
Soldato
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Radar cruise has been the surprise hit of my new car to be honest. I never used the standard cruise in my F36 as the constant need to fiddle with the speed meant it was just as easy to use my foot. I did a round trip from Cheltenham to Oxford yesterday and pottering along the A40 where for long stretches its single carriageway with little hope of an overtake and decided to give it plus the driver assistance stuff a fair shot. I was very impressed with it, although I must admit I've not yet dared to see if it can cope with a vehicle coming to a complete stop in front of me. I can see it getting well used on the more monotonous stretches of road. The steering assistance does feel a little odd at times as it didnt always take the line I would naturally choose through some corners but in general I could just lightly rest my hands on the wheel and let it do its thing.

You need to let it stop you, that's probably the best use for it in stop start traffic, followed by single carriageway driving. For multi lane roads it's not as useful. Lane keep assist isn't so useful, it frequently loses lock on the lane, and often starts to drive you onto exit sliproads at junctions. But yeah, radar cruise is worth its weight in gold, absolutely seek it out imo.
 
Man of Honour
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absolutely seek it out imo.

Honestly unless he gets very lucky like you did he'll be searching for ever especially at that budget.

He's lucky to find the Icon LED lights let alone the driver assistance pro. Most of them are just tech pack fitted with massive wheels at the most.
 
Man of Honour
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Radar cruise is great, but so rare (on most fairly high end cars at least), all Golf's have had it as standard for years :o

When I was looking for a 7 Series, I think I found one with it, out of about 100... and of all the cars you might hope it's added to, that would be one...
 

mjt

mjt

Soldato
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31 Aug 2007
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Why is ACC so rare on the G30 in the UK? Seems crazy it wasn't included in some business/lease options pack or something.

Anyway, if it's the same system that's in my i3 then it isn't worth the cost. It's absolutely rubbish. Doesn't work when the sun's shining, doesn't work when it's raining, can't see dark objects at night and treats parked cars as obstacles in the road.

I never had any issues with the ACC in my 2016 Golf, but the ACC in my i3 cuts out at least once every time I use it :mad:
 
Soldato
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Do you think this is a transient phenomenon Fox, or has there been a shift in used car prices?

ie are we going to be in similar disbelief that a 7 year old 530d is going for £x in 3 years time?

I appreciate you don’t have a crystal ball, but is there not a degree of anchoring here? It used to cost less, so now it’s expensive? Surely the market values are the market values...I’ve had an auto trader search for these for about 6 months (and m340i - which don’t seem to be getting any cheaper, in fact gone up on average in that period) and this is the best deal I’ve seen in terms of price/spec. The next point is - it’s clearly not been sold in 2 months on the forecourt, how flexible do AUC tend to be on price?

my budget is really quite flexible, I’m not wedded to the idea of getting a 5, or a diesel, even a BMW, etc. I’m just looking to hit a nice crossover between spec, comfort, residuals...you might say a unicorn in other words. Appreciate the input, I’ve read your posts in other threads about the current BMW range.
 
Man of Honour
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Do you think this is a transient phenomenon Fox, or has there been a shift in used car prices?

Some of it is absolutely lifecycle based. When a car is new, used versions of it are expensive. When I bought my first F10 in 2014 I bought a 2010 530d SE for £20k which makes the G30 you've found seem not exactly outrageous, especially when you consider I did this because a 2010 M Sport was at least £24k at the time. But the F10 was mid life, a year after its facelift at that point. Pretty much exactly where the G30 is now on its model lifecycle.

My next F10 I bought in 2016 - a year old - for not much more than that G30 is up for. But this was a year before the eventual replacement of the F10 with the G30 and towards the end of its life. So this absolutely will play a part in values.

I appreciate you don’t have a crystal ball, but is there not a degree of anchoring here? It used to cost less, so now it’s expensive? Surely the market values are the market values...I’ve had an auto trader search for these for about 6 months (and m340i - which don’t seem to be getting any cheaper, in fact gone up on average in that period) and this is the best deal I’ve seen in terms of price/spec. The next point is - it’s clearly not been sold in 2 months on the forecourt, how flexible do AUC tend to be on price?

The difficult thing here is trying to convey what I mean. I don't think this car is an overpriced example - that is, you can't go and buy one just as good for £20k. So, if you absolutely want a 4 year old G30 then this one is about as good an example as you'll find for the money.

But I just think that 4 year old BMW's seem to represent poor value for money having done it before myself. When I came to replace my SE with an M Sport I initially wanted a 3-4 year old example for around £20-23k but it just seemed like such poor value given how much I was eventually able to get a 12 month old car for. In terms of total ownership costs, I doubt it really ended up costing me much more overall.

I've just jumped on to the AUC site to find something to show you what I mean. I appreciate this isn't quite the same spec and is missing the Icon LED lights but I'm sure one would pop up with these and it isn't going to double the price. Here is a 9 month old AUC 530d with just 5k miles on it for under £30k:

https://usedcars.bmw.co.uk/vehicle/202009153758778?quoteref=f3f84379-1c76-4d9b-8fe8-0ef7150b7bbc

To spend another 3-4k to end up moving from a 4 year old car to a 9 month old one to me seems like a sensible thing to do if you can raise the extra cash. In real terms thats probably even cheaper than my F10 was.

Lets do some man maths on it.

4 year old car is 25k. 9 month old car is £29k, so you've got a 4k difference.

If like me you want to maintain warranty then after 1 year on the 25k car you're paying £1k a year. Whereas you've got a full extra year and 3 months warranty on the 9 month old one, saving you about £1250. So now the difference is £2750.

Is the 20 plate car going to be worth £2750 more than the 17 plate car in 3 years time?

I'd be amazed if it wasn't. So by spending that little more you've effectively ended up in a virtually brand new car for no extra overall cost.
 
Soldato
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Thanks, I do completely see where you are coming from, and your worked example is sort of exactly what I was looking for re hitting this sweet spot on the depreciation curve. I wouldn’t have trouble shelling out a bit extra for a newer car and with the right options, but I don’t see any going at the moment.

On the AUC site, there’s no <1yo 530d with say Tech Pack for under £38k; I wonder if the options are pushing up the prices even more in the newer cars. So perhaps I just need to keep my eye on AUC to see if any of them start to come down. Maybe there will be a bit more volume going through forecourts now that they are open to public again.

Ultimately I accept that if something doesn’t come up then something has to give - be that age or spec that I’m willing to settle for, or before I know it the G30 will be the old model and I’ll be going through this again with the replacement :cry:
 
Man of Honour
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You can factory order a new one for under 40k from some dealers.

This is the problem we had with the Mini. Wanted a year old Cooper with Chilli Pack, XL Nav, head up, camera, etc. Even without half those options everything under a year old was ridiculous money so we ended up ordering a new one to the exact spec for less than most of the AUC year old cars at the time. It's bizarre. I can only assume that people don't often shop new and used, so the used buyers don't think about the new cost.

It didn't even take that long to arrive, madness to think people were happy to pay more for a used car. Often people just look at the list price I guess.
 
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