BMW and M Power Owners

Voxination said:
BM54 capacitor upgrade + aux input: £150
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How was this? I'm considering this for my new car and people say it is amazing, but i'm a sceptic!

Voxination said:
It's been a brilliant car and the one I've owned for the longest, I'm genuinely sad to see it go, but it's now time for bigger and better things. Watch this space!
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I remember how genuinely sad i was when i sold my first 330i, but it will disappear when you get an E92 M3 - no doubt.
 
The upgrade was my only reasonable priced and easy option due to having the standard nav unit, and I was so annoyed with appalling quality in the stock system that I was getting a bit desperate. Had heard good things so arranged to travel to Baris @ Carphonics in North London (thankfully not that far from me) where he had another one he could quickly swap out so I could do an A-B comparison, and to my ears the difference was night and day. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a complete transformation (and certainly nowhere near the Bose system I had previously in a Mazda 3), but it made the system tolerable.

If I were to do it again then I'd only upgrade the amps and not bother with the aux as the quality on that wasn't as good as the CDs, or I'd put the money towards a complete ICE overhaul + sound deadening install, but I appreciate that's much more expensive and not in the spirit of an M3 where you'd like to save weight and not add it.

When looking at E92 M3s I'm immediately discounting any that still have the standard stereo :p
 
With decent F10 M5s available for around £40k now, I'm really hoping decent earlier examples will fall to that level in around 3 years. Best car in the current BMW range imo.
 
Voxination said:
When looking at E92 M3s I'm immediately discounting any that still have the standard stereo :p
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I had the business Hi-Fi upgrade and it was very good. The standard system in the E9x was head and shoulders above the standard systems in the E46, and I have good experience of both upgraded systems and standard systems in both cars.

However, I see what you're saying. If I was to buy an M3 I would want it to be fully packed, and most M3 buyers will have specced upgraded speakers before anything else so it should be quite easy to find.
 
You would have to be a lunatic to pay 100k for a car like that. Just wait until they are a 24 months old and stick a warranty on a nice low mileage car.
 
rare said:
You would have to be a lunatic to pay 100k for a car like that. Just wait until they are a 24 months old and stick a warranty on a nice low mileage car.
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Not really, list price would have been 100k, on a 640d you can get 20k discount so I assume you can get 25k or so on this so £75k in this day and age is not a lot for a high end car.

Note: I don think £75k is a lot of money, just that top end cars now seem to be touching £100k now
 
Gaygle said:
I had the business Hi-Fi upgrade and it was very good. The standard system in the E9x was head and shoulders above the standard systems in the E46, and I have good experience of both upgraded systems and standard systems in both cars.

However, I see what you're saying. If I was to buy an M3 I would want it to be fully packed, and most M3 buyers will have specced upgraded speakers before anything else so it should be quite easy to find.
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Glad to hear there is a general improvement in even the standard systems. What's the best way to spot the business system, is that the one with tweeters on the A-pillars that aren't labelled with the Harman Kardon branding? I know the individual system has distinctly different door speakers that can be seen just from looking, and would really like to have that, but I'd be willing to sacrifice that to get EDC, heated seats and a decent colour scheme.
 
Voxination said:
Has anyone ever seen the "Palladium Silver" leather in the flesh? This M3 is looking rather good, but worried the leather colour looks distinctly like the grey in the E46 (in other words, ghastly). Car is sadly a bit too far away to quickly pop along to take a look.

http://usedcars.bmw.co.uk/M/4.0-V8/Chesterfield/2074288-604757934-3497113.aspx?srcmdc=se_na_re_
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£30k on an E92. Madness :(

I think £20k is about as much as you'd want to spend on one these days. They are old cars now and splashing down 30 grand on one seems a bit mental. I'd rather have an F30 335i or an M235i for that money.

Or if it's got to be an E92 M3:

http://usedcars.bmw.co.uk/M/4.0-V8/Northampton/2074288-604743376-3497154.aspx?srcmdc=se_na_re_

Thats probably about as much as you'd really want to spend on a car thats generationally more than 10 years old? It'll feel like an old car a lot of the time which is absolutely fine... if it wasn't for the £30k you'd have spent buying it! One of the major issues I had with my 335i was that it didn't feel like it was a £20k car - it felt like a much cheaper car. And that was 4 years ago!

Somebody on here got an E92 M3 for £17k. As much as a bang on about how crap CCC is and now amazing CIC is it isn't worth paying £13,000 more and it's about the only credible difference between an 07/08 M3 and an 09/10 M3.
 
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The problem is £20k will only buy one like you have linked, which doesn't have CIC nav, the DCT gearbox or EDC. To get these at a reasonable mileage then you get up to and past the £30k mark rather quickly. Market value doesn't always equal fair value, just look at E92 335i's, last I checked for a good spec LCI they were nudging £20k, now even though the car shouldn't be worth that, the market determines that's what they exchange hands for, which will also work in your favor when selling (although probably not for a 335i, see my point about F30 335i below.)

The problem with an F30 335i or M235i is that they don't feel special enough, nor do they have a V8. They're also at the £30k price point quite early into their production where an LCI will most likely happen during my potential 3 years of ownership, pushing values down even further, and no matter how amazing an example I buy, why will people pay top money for a pre-LCI large petrol engined normal 3 series when F30 M3s will be depreciating towards an achievable value?

I get the whole argument against spending lots on an older generation car, however it's not like you take the entire £30k and throw it down the drain, the (albeit heavily depreciating) asset still has value, which will still have a premium over the 2008 poverty spec M3s in a few years time. It probably won't be anywhere near a £10k premium, but it will be a premium nonetheless. Viewing it as a total cost of ownership keeps things reasonable(ish).
 
If you want something to feel 'special' buy a proper sports car not a fast 3 Series. I am not doubting the M3's competence but it is a 3 Series, after all. Something like a Porsche Cayman will very much feel special every time you even sit in it, whereas sitting in an M3 is exactly the same as sitting in a 320d M Sport.
 
Tbh, I'd pick a Cayman over an M3 all day long! That said, nice choice of 08 M3s in Ireland which net out at <£16k due to our punishing tax scheme.
 
russ9898 said:
I must say after reading a number of members on here recommending the purchase of a sub 60k mileage BMW with full BMW service history and to take out a comprehensive warranty on that car...I am glad I read and digested that advice and did exactly that.
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[TW]Fox;27561955 said:
So I stick to sub 60k purchases and then put the warranty on. Is it good value? Probably not. Does it enable peace of mind? Yes it does. In terms of actual condition I've no doubt a 140k 4 year old car is every bit as good as a 4 year old 50k mile car but it's all about the warranty for me.
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:(

This is why I shied away from 325/330ds when looking over the summer.
I'm looking at them again however as I'm doing more miles than expected and the 3 doors is rather impractical in the grand scheme of things.

But reading this really makes you wonder about taking a punt on a 100k+ 1 owner x25d/x30d/x35d...
And even the petrols can cause a world of pain.

My logic is that if something were to go wrong, it would've been replaced if the car's done 100-120k in 4-5 years, but you can have things occur almost overnight like with russ9898 :(

Ultimately you spend £9-10k and hope for a good 'un or fork out £12-14k on for an Approved Used BMW. But then will you ever run into £3-4k worth of repairs...?
 
[TW]Fox;27572722 said:
One of the major issues I had with my 335i was that it didn't feel like it was a £20k car - it felt like a much cheaper car. And that was 4 years ago!
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Agreed, I recently tried a modified 335d, not very old and LOL fast but it really didn't feel like an expensive nor premium product, my £1500 e39 felt vastly superior in both quality of build and frankly how it drove - albeit much slower!

I can't help feeling I'd be dissatisfied if I'd dropped £10k on one, never mind 20 or 30!


Some but by no means all recent BMW's really don't feel like the quality products that their predecessors undoubtedly were.
 
I'm needing a set of tyres for my F20 120d 245/35/R18. Wanting to stick with runflats, but this seems against the grain for others.
Anyone want to recommend a tyre? its got pirelli on it atm which seem ok..
 
[TW]Fox;27572888 said:
If you want something to feel 'special' buy a proper sports car not a fast 3 Series. I am not doubting the M3's competence but it is a 3 Series, after all. Something like a Porsche Cayman will very much feel special every time you even sit in it, whereas sitting in an M3 is exactly the same as sitting in a 320d M Sport.
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Having owned a E92 M3 manual, I left it for a Cayman S, then a 996 C4S and I am now buying another E92 M3, this time DCT.

That is also after considering a 997 Turbo, 97 GTS and a new M3.

Sitting in, experiencing and owning an E92 M3, is not comparable to a the same of a 320d.

Voxination said:
But I don't want a Cayman, I want an M3.
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M3 beats Cayman, unless you are going to track it. Then its a closer call. You need to decide if you can live with the terrible ride on the Cayman over UK roads.
 
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