...17000 miles.
It has been one year since I picked up my car from the dealers showroom with a virgin 26 miles on the clock. During those 17000 miles whilst sat in the drivers seat I have laughed uncontrollably with glee, screamed at the top of my voice in anger, moaned with pleasure, felt my stomach do somersaults with fright, had adrenaline rush through my veins and farted god knows how many times.
It has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Firstly, the bad bits.
I have lost count of the amount of times the car has been back at various dealerships due to faults. The faults have been as follows:
-Faulty dual mass flywheel causing a rattle (x2)
-Left headlight taking random notions to just turn on and off.
-A drivers seat that is annoyingly squeaky and creaky.
-An interior built out of tambourines and other such percussion instruments.
-Dodgy drivers door seal coming off.
-There's more but I have forgotten.....
The problem hasn't been so much with the faults themselves as some of them were fixed straight away. It has been with the completely inconsistent treatment from the BMW dealerships. One day they'll be absolutely astounding and the next they'll be a bunch of jibbering idiots without a clue as to what is going on. I'm at my wit's end with them.
Then comes the good stuff. Well, what can I say.....just look at it! I still get a little bit excited every time I walk up to the car to get into it, even if it's for a really boring motorway journey. There's a certain sense of occasion about driving it, even though it's not really that special or anything in that sense. I can't put my finger on it.
Despite having ride quality comparable to that of Fred Flinstone's car, due mainly to the ridiculously unforgiving runflat tyres, the car is a pleasure to drive. It can become tedious after a long day at work but what low slung sports car isn't going to be tedious in some fashion? The straight six 3.0 N52 265bhp engine is an absolute peach. It's a smooth as butter when being driven civilly but when you want to have a bit of fun it transforms into a bit of an animal. The noise, the power delivery, the response - they are all sublime. All it's faults are forgiven after a blast around some back roads. I have been guilty of coming back from a spirited drive and parking my arse on the balcony just so I can look at it and listen to it tick it's way towards cooing down.
As for the boring stuff, since day one I have averaged 27.8mpg. I really don't take it easy at all so that figure has impressed me and still does considering my previous car, a Seat Toledo 1.8T got only about 1mpg more. So in total thats about 612 gallons of fuel which is 2782 litres of Shell V-Power. Not that bad for a car in this performance bracket.
Also, last week the car had it's first ever service with 16850 miles on the clock!! I had noticed the fuel economy dropping off and the engine being a bit noisier over the past month or two so I was keen to get the oil service done. I bought 8l of Castrol Edge from eBay for £44 and on top of that the service labour and filters cost £123 bringing the total to £167. Again, not bad considering that was the only service required in 17k. The big bummer for me was a month or so ago when on the way to work I hit a plank of wood on the M27. The result was two new rear Bridgestone Potenza RE050A runflat tyres. The cheapest I could get them at the time was £465 for the pair fitted. I could have had 4 new top brand normal tyres for that. So, apart from the tyres, the running costs are what I consider to be rather cheap given the type of car that it is.
To conclude. Despite the questionable service from the dealers, the shocking ride quality, the less than perfect reliability and the Fisher Price interior, I'm in love. I love this car. That's all I can say! I have considered changing it for something a bit more sensible now that I haver a motorbike for my kicks but I don't think I could bring myself to do it. A little part of me would die inside if I didn't have "Bob" sitting out in fromt of my balcony bogarting the scenery.
I had much better pics which were taken by much better photographers than me at the last Hampshire meet but I've lost them
So yeah, no real point to this thread apart from I thought some of you may be interested since the value of these has plummeted and they offer excellent value for money now.
