BMW 530i Sport - 3 years on

Dunno. £4k tops? I'd need to find somebody who appreciates its condition rather than buys cars based on numbers... easier said than done.

But then its not really an issue - I've always said residual values dont matter until the day you part with the car. It's value doesn't affect any decisions I make to do work on it or upgrade things.

I do worry what would happen if somebody ran into it and it was written off. Book value for a 7 year old 5 Series with big miles isn't going to buy me another like this. Lets just hope it never happens!
 
MarkDavis said:
They look good - lifts the look of the dash.

Where did you get them from, and how much of a pain was it to retrofit?
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I bought them off Wicksta on here, it was a tenner, and it took about an hour to retrofit. Removing the cluster was easy enough but seperating the plastic cover from the cluster was a bit of a nightmare.

You can do the same with your E46. Just get the metal ones not the plastic ones.
 
Maybe I've just been very lucky but I've never spent £1500 in 3 years on repairs on cars, I'd personally be disappointed with that. I appreciate it is a premium brand and you will pay more when things do go wrong but you must have had a fair few things go wrong for £1500. I don't just mean compared to my Golf, my misses had a 2 year old Saab for 5 years and apart from the usual all we needed was a water pump and shocker.
I get the impression BMW's are quite unreliable from what I read and from friends, family and colleagues.
Are you happy with the reliability?

I've had my Golf coming upto 3 years in December and in that time all that's gone wrong was an erratic idle, £35 to connect it up to a VAGCOM, reset the throttle body, sorted.
 
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chipperhead said:
I get the impression BMW's are quite unreliable from what I read and from friends, family and colleagues.
Are you happy with the reliability?
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They're probbably designed to break.

I would say they are probbably average, not amazing but not falling to pieces either, if I wanted reliablity I would have purchased a Toyota/Lexus.
 
robnut said:
The general realiablity, 5 speed i guess? do any known issues?
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jamoor said:
They're probbably designed to break.
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My old man has an e39 528i Steptronic auto, its just shy of 100k ahead of Fox's. (258k iirc)

Its been utterly relaiable (the car generally as well as the 'box)

Some say change the fluid before it gets much past 100k, my Dads car is 160,000 miles past that "danger zone" with no problems.

Trick is, few owners, plenty of maintenance. as huge as the mileage is on my Dads car, he's driven just about every one of them.

I had a 728i Steptronic that started to stop shifting automatically into 5th gear, this car had done 128k when this problem showed up, I never found out if it was a mechanical or software issue - I sold the car soon after.

Designed to break? look after it and imo, the answer is no, not at all.

Nice review Fox, your car is a credit to you.

[TW]Fox;14959232 said:
Amusingly his replacement car was.... a silver BMW 530i Sport with black leather and a manual box. Brand new again. I paid trade book price for the car.
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An e60 or last of the line e39? (I'm sure you've said previously but I forget.... )
 
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That car is so clean you cannot believe it's that old! At some point I will have a car that isn't too tatty to begin with and money to back up my habit of doing stuff to my cars hehe. I doubt I could ever get a car THAT clean! I do try though hehe.
 
chipperhead said:
Maybe I've just been very lucky but I've never spent £1500 in 3 years on repairs on cars, I'd personally be disappointed with that. I appreciate it is a premium brand and you will pay more when things do go wrong but you must have had a fair few things go wrong for £1500. .
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It's pretty high mileage though remember, things wear out so it's to be expected really.

Maybe if he'd spent £1500 more originally on a lower mileage one he might not have had to spend anything on repairs, who knows?
 
Maybe look into more specialist insurers who take condition etc. into consideration on valuation?

I think you can agree a valuation before commencing the policy?
 
[TW]Fox;14959536 said:
Dunno. £4k tops? I'd need to find somebody who appreciates its condition rather than buys cars based on numbers... easier said than done.

But then its not really an issue - I've always said residual values dont matter until the day you part with the car. It's value doesn't affect any decisions I make to do work on it or upgrade things.

I do worry what would happen if somebody ran into it and it was written off. Book value for a 7 year old 5 Series with big miles isn't going to buy me another like this. Lets just hope it never happens!
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I'd have it off you for 4k :p


Re the insurance.. Some sort of agreed value policy perhaps?
 
He's be lucky to get 3 to £3.5k now. Bearing in mind you can score 02 530i M sports in more than reasonable condition for £4k with sub 100k mileage.

Still looks great though which is the sad thing, people see mileage and go :(

Fox, how did you discover the airbag was faulty from the ebay guy?
 
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Surely if someone hit you, you wouldn't have to accept their valuation and could insist on it getting repaired to your satisfaction? Just don't go round hitting people yourself!
 
chipperhead said:
Are you happy with the reliability?
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Yes. They are complicated cars and I was under no illusion that it would be as reliable as my Mondeo. To be honest not that much has gone wrong - but when things do go wrong it's not normally a quick or cheap fix.

eidolon said:
It's pretty high mileage though remember, things wear out so it's to be expected really.
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Interestingly the only mileage related failiure I've had on the car was the wheel bearing which was probably the cheapest thing to replace! The rest has been common age related E39 things - the cooling system is a very, very common problem which tends to rear its head at about 5 years old irrespective of mileage (I think the plastic goes crap with age) and I was dissapointed to find that when I replaced the dampers the leaky one was not simply worn, as I expected, but damaged by BMW 2 years previously :(

Maybe if he'd spent £1500 more originally on a lower mileage one he might not have had to spend anything on repairs, who knows?
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When I bought the car a low mileage example of the same age and condition was approximately £13,000. The saving was well worth it. I was actually expecting to buy a 90k mile 528i Sport on a V or W plate until this popped up, if I was honest.

To be honest the only thing the mileage has really done has caused people on the internet to scoff. My Dads E39 has nearly 100k less miles on it and is not in as good condition as this one despite being reasonably well looked after from 2 years of age and 20k miles.

Lucero said:
He's be lucky to get 3 to £3.5k now. Bearing in mind you can score 02 530i M sports in more than reasonable condition for £4k with sub 100k mileage.
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I'm not getting in a valuation arguement because it doesn't matter to me but you cannot buy great condition sub 100k mile 02 530i Sports for under £4k. If you could we'd replace the 530d with one - been keeping an eye out for that very reason and the cheap ones are generally quite crap and have 8 previous owners from Birmingham. Also getting a mint 1 owner car these days is virtually unheard of.

Fox, how did you discover the airbag was faulty from the ebay guy?
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It triggered an airbag fault code and the 530d has the same wheel so I was able to swap out with a known good airbag to work out what was wrong.

Hugely annoyed - the airbag was scrap but he insisted I sent the whole lot back.
 
Sukh said:
Surely if someone hit you, you wouldn't have to accept their valuation and could insist on it getting repaired to your satisfaction? Just don't go round hitting people yourself!
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I don't think so, they need to put you back to the point you were in before the accident, which is a repaired car or the cash equivalent.
 
jamoor said:
I don't think so, they need to put you back to the point you were in before the accident, which is a repaired car or the cash equivalent.
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It's not quite as simple as that - he's sort of right, you can within reason insist on repair but it often takes a fight. This is because pre accident you had a certain car and not a cheque for its book value, therefore such a cheque doesnt put you back in the original position.

This only applies to non fault accidents.
 
[TW]Fox;14958405 said:
Just under £8k :(

Today you can buy an M5 for that. Or an absolutely mint utterly loaded 540i Sport.

About twice a year.
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Lucero said:
He's be lucky to get 3 to £3.5k now. Bearing in mind you can score 02 530i M sports in more than reasonable condition for £4k with sub 100k mileage.
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I don't know where you guys are looking, but the prices are crazy at the moment. And I mean crazy.
I'm not sure if it's the fear of sudden inflation or just the usual end of decade owners inability to understand 01 or 02 plate is now 8 years old, but over the last two months I saw car prices shoot 30-40%. Subarus I looked at for £5.5 are now listed for £7.5, a typical 530i or 330i tourings are now listed at double (and more) the Glass' guide.
If you take a look on autotrader, you'll see semi-decent 530i sport on 01 plate fetch now around 5k, regardless of mileage. And among all the usual "look 8 year old 530i motorway cruiser with just 50k on the clock and full service history from Raj's Garage in Leicester" bullpoop it still is quite difficult to find well documented, clean examples.
 
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