The following review is long – over 6000 words. Continue to read it all only if you give a toss about an old diesel 5 Series. Alternatively, scan through and take a comment out of context, post something controversial about it, and then watch the resulting chaos as torque/diesel/gearing/MPG/reliability/BMW/Mondeo/Plymouth/the sadness of my life for writing this are debated. Thnx.
Many of you will remember with great fondness the recent news that I was purchasing a new car. The swooning women, bouquets of flowers and the crowds celebrating outside my house were most appreciated – thank you OcUK.
It feels like forever ago, but last Wednesday 30th March I collected the infamous ‘535d’. A sleepless and stressful journey to Plymouth, courtesy of First Great Western’s sumptuous chav class carriage and failed booking system, eventually landed me at the fabulous Ibis Hotel Plymouth at midnight on Tuesday.
The Ibis comes enthusiastically close to being a three-star hotel, able to provide the magical and quintessentially English aesthetics of a greasy spoon amalgamated with a lorry sleeper cab. The staff were polite, albeit a stage or two of evolution behind. I slept well in the cardboard-cut-out bed, despite a vicious SMS ‘difference of opinion’ with my ex-boyfriend that ran in to the early hours. The wide selection of sausages, egg, beans, bacon, egg, bacon, sausages and beans at breakfast filled me with a delightful sense of impending diarrhoea that lasted two days.
Using the bleeding edge of my cunning wit and planning skill, I booked a hotel that was just a 2 minute walk from the BMW dealership. Unfortunately, some kind of after-effect of the Japanese tsunami was hitting the coast, and the stylish garbs I sported that day demonstrated their absorptive qualities. Undeterred, as the proud holder of the full suite of swimming stripes, I was able to manage the 50 lengths to the dealership.
Walking through the doors of BMW the overwhelming nasal-burning concoction of the salesman’s favourites Lynx Africa, Brylcreem, CK One and Tetleys’ blew in to me like the tornado from the Wizard of Oz. I held on tightly as the pressure between the interior and exterior of the dealership equalised and things settled. I sauntered towards the used car manager’s throne, hoping he wouldn’t notice my approach, but the scent of cash was too strong and his senses too well honed - his ears perked and his beady eyes fixed themselves directly on my person. Twirling the throne towards me, fingers touching and a smile cracking, Mr Burns invited me over.
I was asked if I wanted something to drink. This was fortuitous as I had mistakenly not had a coffee – by this point it was after 9:00 AM, and therefore the chances of me suddenly dropping in to a coma in any one second was approaching 100%. I made my standard order of black with two sugars. I was quickly handed white with not enough sugar. I’m only moderately vengeful, and so managed to ignore the deep compulsion to immediately commence the beatings.
Long story short (lol right?), we walked through the documents and I signed on the dotted line. I became the owner of a 2007 E60 LCI BMW 535d M Sport. We briefly checked over the vehicle (the monsoon remained at full force) and I drove off in to the distance… in the direction Heathrow airport. The first few days for the car in my ownership would be spent in the short stay car park of Terminal 1. I did eventually come back, and in total I drove about 1,000 miles over the coming 5 days. The reason for why I have chosen a diesel should now be obvious, so I won’t go in to a detailed justification for choosing the 535d. Suffice to say, purchasing one was a carefully researched and planned action.
Before I continue, something worthy of note is that I once penned a very comprehensive review of the 530i. At over 5,000 words in length, I attempted to cover in detail every aspect of the car. I never completed it. I am typing this sentence now not quite sure if I’ll ever complete this one. The benefit of experience tells me that I should try to be a little more concise, but I enjoy something with a bit of length so this will likely inflate to a similar size. I’ll come back and type a note here with my post-completion thoughts.
Okay, yup, I completed this one. It took a while as I bored myself in to a daze writing parts of it. It will likely bore you in to a daze reading any of it. I tried to write a bit creatively, and think I may even have achieved it up to this point, but I can assure you the remainder is pretty dull.
Engine
The jewel in the crown of the 535d, the aspect of the car that attracts most acclaim, is the powerplant. It certainly is fantastic on paper - producing 286 HP and 580 Nm of torque, the output is truly exceptional for a 3.0 L diesel engine. Despite being 4 years old, if it were released today it would still lead the six cylinder class – Mercedes and Audi only have eight, ten or twelve cylinder engines more powerful, with nobody else even getting a look in. I may also have had mine ‘looked at’. Many vehicles tested after a ‘looking at’ produce around 350 HP and 700 Nm. Standard performance numbers are 0-60 MPH in 6.2s (including a 0.4 second shift to 3rd – it tops out at 58 MPH in 2nd) on to an electronically limited top speed of 155 MPH, ‘looked at’ numbers are expected to be low/mid 5 seconds to 60 and a top speed of 170+.
One of the typical complaints with diesel engines is the irritatingly short power band and repetitive surge, die, surge, die power delivery. A large powerband is made possible by this engine because of clever tuning and, most significantly, a sequential turbo arrangement. A small turbo spools with very little effort from virtually idle and a larger turbo begins operating soon after. This helps minimise lag and lower the RPM required for good power, whilst also providing the necessary boost at high RPM for the peak output. The engine starts to shove shortly after idle, plentifully by 1500 RPM, and carries on producing good power well beyond 4000 RPM, unusually so for a diesel, but these engines are known for it. The pre-LCI 535d would usefully rev to 5000 RPM, but mine stops at 4750. This is mildly disappointing as I wanted to go around blabbing that I have a diesel that revs to ‘5000 RPM or more’.
A common issue with highly-boosted turbocharged engines in general is turbo lag. In absolute terms there is probably a little more lag with the 535d than I thought there would be, but I am learning to manage this by more gradually applying the throttle rather than treating it like a digital switch. Flooring it is fun on occasion, as the enormous surging wave of torque being pushed in to the ZF 6HP28 transmission (shared with the Bentley Continental) has an addictive quality, but for day-to-day use you want to avoid it. I have learnt to adjust the point at which I apply power when, for example, leaving a corner to be just before when I would do so with a normally aspirated engine. With some adjustments like this you can work around the lag the majority of the time. It would be nice not to have to, but it’s an aspect of the compromise that is the 535d, and not a terrible one.
Fortunately, the lack of precision and urgency in the turbo power delivery is made up for by the sheer volume of it, allowing absolutely effortless acceleration in any gear. Once you have moved from a cruise in to acceleration, the lag between little and full acceleration is very slight. It seems once the turbos have a bit of a spin on it’s much easier to bring them up to full steam.
The engine in the 535d is refined… for a diesel engine. A petrol BMW six cylinder from the 70s makes it look like something best mated to a combine harvester. At idle there is a noticeable diesel clatter that permeates the cabin and the vibrations in the steering wheel and seat are not ignorable if you’re used to a good petrol motor. At low engine and road speeds the diesel din is perhaps more prevalent, but as engine and road speeds rise it becomes harder and harder to notice. At much more than 3000 RPM it even starts to sound remotely good, with the aural sensation of a straight six arrangement, the induction noise and the clatter at high frequency even becoming a little bit enjoyable. At a cruise things are generally quiet enough for the fact you are using farmer’s fuel to not make many odds.
The engine is certainly no sensory orgasm or epitome of refinement, but it’s acceptable for an executive car. People who say they can’t tell their cars are diesels are either lying, they lost all of their senses in tragic accident, or they only drive at exactly 50 MPH… everywhere. Diesel has moved on leaps and bounds but petrol remains the noticeably nicer experience.
Despite the tremendous performance and size of the car it returns very respectable economy numbers. I have been driving a very unusual set of roads and distances lately so have avoided taking an overall measurement, but some measuring of journeys to and from work (60 miles M25 each way) have seen anywhere from 36 MPG for a hideously busy morning journey to 48 MPG for a clear evening drive home. I am expecting it to settle somewhere around 40 MPG for my day-to-day use. If you drove steadily I think on a long trip it could top 50 MPG.
Something odd that has recently happened is a DPF regeneration cycle. Being my first diesel car I’ve never really experienced what these are like, but I can confirm while not hugely intrusive, it’s noticeable. The car leaves itself about a gear lower than it would normally be, trying to cruise at around 2000 RPM instead of 1500 RPM or less. It also seems to repeatedly pump a blob of fuel in when driving steadily, so you get this weird stop-go-stop-go sensation as you cruise along. The car is essentially trying to maintain very high exhaust gas temperatures to burn off the crap collected in the filter. Fortunately it only lasts a few minutes and shouldn’t happen all that often. A once a month, at most, kinda thing.
Transmission
The transmission in the LCI 535d is an interesting thing. BMW had no means and reasonable desire to provide a manual option, and so they are all fitted with a modern electronically-controlled torque converter based automatic, released by ZF just in time for the facelift. The transmission is a 6-speeder offering fuel economy virtually the same as the manual, performance virtually the same as a manual and, sometimes unfortunately, a drive virtually the same as a manual. The transmission has a very annoying desire to change up and down to ensure it’s in the absolute ‘best’ gear, with ‘best’ measured in MPG. This does not always equate for the ‘best’ gear for the most enjoyable drive for the discerning automatic user. The shifting quality is high and mostly silky smooth, but there is the occasional and uneasy sensation of taking a sudden deep breath that I have come to know and expect from automatic transmissions with manual aspirations.
The ZF 6PH28 is able to lock the torque converter from 1000 RPM in 1st gear, though BMW have not programmed it to do so. However, it does engage at quite a low speed, and so accelerating gently from a speed bump has sometimes resulted in it deciding to unlock/lock the transmission in concert with a gear change, accompanied by a fairly bad jolt and an uncontrolled changing of the vehicle speed as the resistances in the drivetrain change due to the downshift. All in all that is very annoying. I would have preferred no lock until 40 MPH or more – if I am wandering around town the very reason I am doing so in an automatic is to provide a smoother drive. I am not too concerned if I only average 25 MPG instead of 30 MPG over the 2 miles I am travelling.
I have learnt to adapt to the above by effectively allowing a second or so for the engine and transmission to get back in sync with the wheels before re-accelerating. This is not as irritating as it sounds as it only happens when you are cruising very casually/slowly at 25 MPH or less, and so there is no urgency required with maximum smoothness the goal.
As a comparison, the 530i drove much better around town due to the willingness of the transmission to slip the torque converter. The lack of low-speed lock provided a very smooth and gradual acceleration and deceleration at low speed, a style more suited to an executive car (especially one with an original invoice price in the region of £50,000). I am thinking about registering the jolt as a ‘fault’ with BMW and seeing if I can have the transmission software updated in the hope that they made some tweaks over the years that may improve matters.
Despite the issues at low speed the transmission truly shines on the open road, with the converter lock providing for a more enjoyable (and economical) manual-esque experience during cruising and acceleration. My 535d is also fitted with the optional 2TB ‘Sports automatic transmission’, which provides steering wheel shift paddles and a ‘Sport’ button that modifies shifting times, accelerator pedal response and steering response (the vehicle is fitted with Servotronic, which varies the steering assistance based on vehicle speed, so I suspect it tweaks a control variable in this system). A press of the ‘Sport’ button significantly changes how easy it is to get the 535d to pull up its skirt, and it pulls it up pretty high for a car of this class.
The adjustments made in ‘Sport’ mode serve to ensure that even the lightest of pedal movements have you rocketing towards the 4750 RPM ‘redline’ with maximum vigour. In fact, the pedal becomes so sensitive, I have found myself sometimes being completely unable to balance it, resulting in a kangarooing sensation as the car rapidly pulsates between off acceleration and full-bore assault. This is possibly more me than the car, but I like blaming others. UPDATE: As I re-read through this I can confirm I have figured this one out and yup, it was me. I’ve not had this for a long time.
The steering response doesn’t so much become sharper as heavier, but the shifting time becomes astoundingly quick for a transmission of this nature. It is fast enough that it feels as if there’s almost no delay between the gears, with only the rev counter giving away you’re running on a different cog. It’s not as fast as many of the dual-clutch manual-based transmissions out there, but the shifts are said to be around the accepted level of human perception (200ms). It sounds unlikely so I will try to get some videos of the gear change ‘in action’. You can literally be driving with the cruise control on at 70 and flick from 6th to 5th to 4th and back almost instantly without a jolt (the cruise control remains active during manual shifts). I think the total shift time on the Nissan GT-R is around 200ms.
To complicate the transmission modes further, not only is there a ‘Sport’ mode, there’s a ‘Sport’ mode. Yup, there are two independent ‘Sport’ modes that can be used alone or in combination with each other. BMW have obviously decided that they have used ‘Sport’ so much it has no meaning anymore, but can’t be bothered to invent another term so are just using ‘Sport Sport’. Nice.
To go through the options, I can be in D and engage ‘Sport’ mode via the button and this hastes up everything as described above. I can engage manual shifting in D mode, too, though if you select a gear and stay at a constant speed it will switch back to D. Then there’s DS mode, activated by clicking the shifter left a notch. This activates a sports shifting pattern and when manual mode is engaged from DS it will never flick back to DS, only upshifting and downshifting when absolutely necessary to prevent stalling/limiter hitting. I can be in D, D w/ ‘Sport’, DS, DS w/ ‘Sport’, D M (manual), D M w/ ‘Sport’, DS M, DS M w/ ‘Sport’. I hope the transmission software update adds even more modes to the list of eight I’m mostly not going to use.
I spend most of my time driving in D or D M, using the manual shifting if I am spying a gap and want to be sure of no delay in power. On occasion I also use D w/ ‘Sport’, say if I am at traffic lights on a roundabout and need to quickly change lanes. It will happily rev to 3000+ RPM before considering a change allowing you to nip ahead of pretty much anything. That may seem a bold claim, but the acceleration in 1st is exceptionally rapid. They have not completely geared 1st gear down in the 535d, so you essentially have a very short launch gear that tops out at 33 MPH, with the following three gears laid out like a close short-ratio transmission. The peak torque going to the wheels in 1st, per ton, is around 4,500 Nm. Some 1st gear torque/ton food for thought:
E92 M3: 3,815 Nm/ton
E60 M5: 4,100 Nm/ton
E46 330i: 2,500 Nm/ton
That first 30 MPH does not take long.
Chassis
There’s no way to hide from the fact that the 535d is a big and heavy car. Although, at 4.84 metres long and weighing in at 1660 Kg sans driver, it’s actually a little lighter than one would expect. Prior to EffecientDynamics (BMW’s economy-boosting scheme introduced in 2007 that the 535d also benefits from), the purveyor of propeller-badged automobiles was using lightweight materials to maintain class-leading levels of economy in large cars. This resulted in the E60 being blessed with an aluminium front-end that not only improves economy, but also performance and handling. In combination with a diesel engine sporting an aluminium block and head, this means the LCI E60 535d doesn’t suffer all too much from a heavy nose, allowing it to respond to a change in direction reasonably quickly.
The 535d comes in two main trim levels – ‘SE’ and ‘M Sport’. Aside from aesthetic differences, there are also handling modifications. Mine being of the ‘M Sport’ variety means that it is firmer than normal, but not so hard that it’s harsh. BMW have done a good job, once again, of getting the sport suspension right. Complemented by strong anti-roll properties, the overall experience is solid enough that it’s able to usher itself along a B-road with decent composure and very respectable pace. Only the very tightest of bends force you to slow down to a crawl, but that was the same in my lighter 530i, and my lighter still 330i. If you want to scrape around narrow hairpin bends you don’t generally decide to do it in an automatic diesel executive car, so I can’t really fault it for that. Overall the drive is typically BMW – well balanced, communicative and very enjoyable. The coveted 50 : 50 weight distribution is almost perfectly maintained, with BMW managing 52.5 : 47.5 here.
My 535d is fitted with the optional 19 inch style 172M wheels. Wheels of this size would not be my preference because of the adverse effect on ride quality, but there’s a quirk with the E60 in that the 19 inch wheels do not come fitted with run flat tyres. This means the ride on the 19s is actually better or equal to when it’s on run-flat 17s and 18s, with the added benefit of a wider selection of cheaper tyres to choose from come replacement time. The quality of the ride is ‘good’ – not ‘great’, as its quite firm meaning the little undulations and variations in the road are all communicated, but I would have bought a Mercedes-Benz if a cossetting ride meant that much to me. It’s certainly more than adequately comfortable and I think nicer than the E39 with 18 inch wheels. Passengers have commented to that effect.
Absolute grip levels are, as you’d expect, high. With 245 35 19 tyres at the front and wide 275 30 19 tyres at the rear, you can carry a lot of pace through bends and it takes a lot to provoke wheel slip in the dry. It’s currently wearing a set of nearly-new Continental Sport Contact 2s and I am finding these adequate in the dry and wet. There is good feedback but there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to sticking power. I expect when I replace these with either Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2s or Michelin Pilot Super Sports things will be cranked up a notch.
The one area of performance where the 535d feels a little lacklustre when driving is the brakes. Despite being powerful with discs measuring 348mm at the front and 345mm at the rear, it never really feels like it’s stopping you. I think this sensation is caused by a few things. Firstly, the level of refinement means you don’t appreciate how fast you are going when you start to slow. Secondly, the firm suspension with anti-diving properties means you don’t get much of that satisfying nose dive when you drop anchor. Thirdly, it’s a big heavy car that’s perhaps a little under-braked and it takes a while to stop. Fourthly, and potentially most importantly, I am used to stopping on tyres that are at the pinnacle of performance if you exclude ones inspired by the track. I am probably going to refrain from labelling this a weak point until I am running on tyres that benchmark higher.
Interior
The interior of the LCI E60 is a very nice place to be. Great improvements were made during the facelift to the build quality and the design, and I, personally, think the LCI is worlds apart, and to the extent that I don’t really like the interior design of the pre-LCI E60. The doors are all wrong.
The E60 had a tough act to follow in terms of construction and finish quality attempting to succeed the E39, but it’s all very good. I am finding it hard to find the E60 much worse than the E39, but also difficult to find it much better. It’s very much the same with maybe a few tiny things that aren’t as good, which is potentially somewhat of a disappointment considering my E60 is 7 years newer than my E39. However, I knew the E60 was no great leap ahead in this area, and so it pretty much met my expectations. An example of where things have slipped is the gaiter on the steering column. Previously matching leather (or at least faux leather), it is now a weird skanky felt dirt magnet. Another is the steering wheel plastic itself – mine has a small piece of plastic peeling (?!), but fortunately I already have the replacement part that I just need to fit. The E39 at 191,000 miles did not have peeling plastics.
The E60 is nicely put together and appears pretty much rattle free. However, there is a rattle coming from inside the armrest, where the mobile phone cradle fits in to the phone harness. Both of these are made from a dreadfully poor quality plastic, the sort of tacky rattly plastic from years gone by that one would be forgiven for thinking was extinct. I’ve poked and prodded it to see if I could figure out exactly where it was coming from so I can shove a bit of tissue paper or something in to stop it, but no luck yet. Fox reported a rattle from the rear parcel shelf, but he was in the back, we were at low speed, on rough roads, and the audio was off. I’m not often driving from the rear or with the music off, so I honestly haven’t noticed it. I have a couple of things always in the boot so I’d probably think the odd knock was one of them anyway. Though, I ventured underneath the boot floor the other day, and the spare wheel wasn’t fixed in to place – it was loose and able to jump about, so I screwed it down. The ‘parcel shelf’ rattle could have been this I suppose. I didn’t hear it originally to be able to say for sure.
The seats in the 535d are of the standard semi-electric sports variety, upholstered in cream beige ‘Dakota’ leather. The cream is very pretty and contrasts nicely with the deep blue exterior. The seats are well padded and supportive, and the car still has a nice leather smell to it. There’s tilt, for/aft, height, backrest angle and thigh support adjustment. That’s nothing exceptional, but enough to find a comfortable position.
The interior is mostly trimmed with wood, but there are the odd metal contrasts such as the surround for the leather transmission gaiter or part of the iDrive control wheel. The cream and wood come together to give the interior a real air of luxury. The colour combination is one of the things that really makes the car.
Equipment
The 535d comes with a fairly decent level of specification as standard, but there are a few ‘must have’ options that fortunately mine was specified with, plus a few other niceties, though it’s not all a pretty picture.
I’ll start with as must have, the Media package, which includes Professional navigation, Bluetooth and voice control. Professional navigation adds a larger 8.8” screen among other bits and the Bluetooth allows very neat and easy integration of a mobile phone, with all of your contacts synchronising with the iDrive computer and becoming quickly selectable using the iDrive wheel. The voice control is a bit of a gimmick. It works, and recognises my voice, but using it for almost anything is much slower than just whirring the iDrive wheel a bit.
One issue with the navigation system is that it doesn’t have full postcode entry – only AA11 1 level. It’s a bit lame considering TomTom has had full postcode since forever. It means I have to Google wherever I am going on my phone to get the road name. Not a showstopper, but meh. Silly decision BMW. Otherwise, Pro nav is very nice. Having your navigation and mapping system fully integrated in the car, always on, always with a signal, is such a boon.
Something I like in a car is a good audio system. Unfortunately, my 535d wasn’t specified with any optional audio, whether that be amplifiers, speakers, USB connectors or anything. I was too impatient to wait for one to come up that did, so I am pretty much stuck with the basic audio. Thank the Lord that BMW saw fit to install something remotely acceptable as standard, rather than repeating their shameful efforts in the E39. Hoping to listen to music in the E39 was roughly equivalent to holding a shell from the beach to your ear and hoping to hear the sea. The E60 is at least equivalent to a plastic cup and string. In all seriousness, BMW did a pretty decent job with the standard setup. The A-pillar and door speakers provide good tonal quality and there are speakers mounted in cabinet-like bins underneath the seats that drive a good deal of bass. If you turn the volume up loud you quickly approach the limits of these ‘subs’, but for normal listening volume there’s enough punch to make it seem like you are listening to a system of a much higher quality.
One option that I really really wish the car had is 6FL. For those who aren’t one of the lucky few people with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the BMW options list past and present, this is USB audio aka plug in a USB stick or an iPod and it will charge and put your songs on the iDrive. Without this the best the car has to offer is an MP3-compatible CD player. It’s possible to have 6FL retrofitted by BMW but it costs over £1000 at my local dealer. There are companies out there offering to do it for around £800. I am half tempted to slowly piece the bits of equipment together and then fit the damn thing myself. I’ve even started looking in to the coding of equipment to the car and that seems possible to do ‘at home’ now. It’s not that 6FL is unaffordable, I just begrudge paying a grand for what is essentially a single USB socket and the thing was only about £200 to specify when new. Alternatives include the Dension Gateway 500, but I am averse to non-OEM stuff. I’d like it to be cleanly integrated. We shall see.
Another absent option is DAB radio. I frequently listen to Gaydar radio (not because it’s gay, but because it’s about the best station in the UK for trashy dancey/housey/pop music) and this is a DAB-only station. It is not economically feasible to retrofit DAB radio ‘properly’, but it can be ‘pretty much’ retrofitted for about £900. Again, ludicrously expensive. I can’t think of any alternatives to this, short of connecting my phone to the car via the cradle (which enhances the signal by utilising the car’s antenna), connecting the 3.5mm out to the car’s 3.5mm AUX-in and then playing the radio over 3G. A total and utter bodge, of course, but free… sort of. I’d have to half-destroy the iPhone 4 -> BMW cradle to get it to work as it covers up the 3.5mm jack, so a £50 ‘upgrade’. Another ‘we shall see’. It depends how close I come to slitting my wrists listen to Kiss 100 play the same song 87 times in the hour.
There are only really two other infotainment items of note. First, the fact that the radio allows you to select a station by name based on what stations are available, rather than having to program them all in. It displays them in a sort of grid and allows you to just scroll through. I like it. Very useful for when you are driving somewhere and you aren’t aware of the frequencies of all the good channels. Second, the MP3-compatible CD player supports the display of MP3 tags – yay! Unfortunately, it seems to only support the display of the tag for the current track, making scanning impossible. Great. Sort of.. worthless, then? I’ve heard reports of iDrive displaying tags for all MP3s on a CD, so maybe I need some kind of update. What an oversight though, tbh. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to have it buffer the first song and then scan the rest of the CD for tags.
Something that I thought may be kind of neat is the Lane Departure Warning system. The car effectively has cameras that it uses to monitor the location of the lane markings on the road, and then if you cross over them without an indication you get a little buzz from the steering wheel. Excited, I first enabled this feature hoping it’d be one of those genuinely useful gadgets like rain sensors and auto lights. I was wrong. In minutes it had been turned off, after buzzing because I went around a parked car and then buzzing because I was using a little bit of the other lane along a B-road to get a better angle of attack. I’ve only since switched it on to demonstrate it. If you are the sort of person who doesn’t always want to indicate it will get annoying as it’s not ignorable. Maybe if I’m driving after not sleeping for 40 hours I’ll switch it on. Maybe.
A piece of equipment that I didn’t think I cared about was a sunroof. I was completely indifferent to the 535d having one, but now I’m a changed man. In the nice weather we had recently it was absolutely delightful to mooch around London with the sunroof back, or have it tilted up when nipping along some lanes. There’s virtually zero noise intrusion when it and the blind are closed so you don’t suffer when not using it. It’s no-where near as cool as a convertible, but I like to think it gives me a little taste of open-top motoring. A sunroof is something I will certainly be paying more attention to when buying in the future!
The final gadget I am going to talk about is the adaptive xenon headlights. Using various measurements from the car’s systems, the headlight beam dynamically and quickly adjusts its horizontal position as you move the steering wheel. It results in slightly better illumination of the road when you are at junctions but much better illumination of a bend along a lane. I wasn’t expecting much from this but I am impressed. It genuinely makes driving at night that bit clearer. The high and low beam xenon lights are pretty powerful anyway, and this feature makes it one of the best cars I’ve driven when it comes to lighting up the road ahead. While we are on the topic of lights, I’ll mention that the car also has the option to operate with Daytime Running Lights (DRLs), configurable via iDrive. When enabled, the car runs the ‘angel eye’ ring sidelights at a higher brightness all times the car is on and the headlights are off. I always drive with at least my sidelights on, so this is a nice feature for me.
Exterior
Looks are almost totally subjective, but I have always quite liked the aesthetics from this era of BMW design, especially if the car is sitting on good wheels and in an M Sport guise. The lines flow very well all the way from the peak of the headlights across the car off the edges of the boot. The car has a muscular stance thanks to the wide track and the appearance of a slightly risen and muscular rear, a favourite attribute of mine. Wide tyres and striking headlight clusters front and rear add to the menacing pose.
One of the aspects of the E60 design are the large panels. This means that a mark in the middle of one stands out like a sore thumb, and a mark in the middle of the driver’s door was one of the things my 535d sported. Before I collected the car BMW let Leatherface loose with a Porter Cable and the mark is gone. Unfortunately, Leatherface clearly has little restraint, and the car now has nine-dimensional paintwork that will take a £500 detail to rectify. I am lucky to have a very good detailer (Rob @ Gleammachine – check him out on Detailing World) down the road, and he thinks he can sort it all. When I get a moment and have recovered from buying the car I will let him work his magic and hopefully get better-than-new paintwork in return.
A welcome option on the car is the M rear spoiler. A tiny little bump, really, but it does set the rear off nicely and adds to the sporting look.
What isn’t welcome is the very low sitting front bumper. Hanging ludicrously close to the ground, I have already unwittingly smashed this down and scraped it along a kerb while leaving a driveway, resulting in the two fins either side of the bump being pretty beat up on the on the underside. This was so bound to happen I am glad it did early, as now I don’t have to pretty the car around everywhere for months on end before the eventual first scrape. I am by no means uncaring of the car’s appearance, but with the amount of driving I do I honestly cannot be bothered to delicately caress the car over every pothole or gently lower the car in an 18-point manoeuvre to leave every driveway. It’s a commuting car to be driven, not the car of my dreams to be loved. I will treat it respectfully but not mollycoddle it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think the 535d is a great car. A brilliant well-rounded ‘do it all’ that doesn’t cost a small fortune to run. Not perfect – far from it and chock full of compromises, but it offers a blend of performance, frugality, ride, handling, refinement and cost that is very hard to match if you are on the road a lot.
Over time I think I will forgive/work around the negatives and be generally very happy with the car. It’s fully BMW warranted, and I plan to keep it that way, so there should be no major bills heading in my direction. With a bit of luck my cost projections will be correct, and over the next few years it stands to cost me very little or even nothing more than the E39 530i A to run, future fuel prices depending.
If you are looking for a good used buy and have similar requirements, I can wholeheartedly recommend you take a look at the 535d.
Well, that’s pretty much it. A few OcUK members have been out in the car, namely Fox, NickXX and Matteh, though Fox only as I was buying the car and before any tweaks. I am sure NickXX will be along shortly to remind you I have no torque at the wheels, and Matteh will let you all know he’d have me in the twisties.
Thanks
Many of you will remember with great fondness the recent news that I was purchasing a new car. The swooning women, bouquets of flowers and the crowds celebrating outside my house were most appreciated – thank you OcUK.
It feels like forever ago, but last Wednesday 30th March I collected the infamous ‘535d’. A sleepless and stressful journey to Plymouth, courtesy of First Great Western’s sumptuous chav class carriage and failed booking system, eventually landed me at the fabulous Ibis Hotel Plymouth at midnight on Tuesday.
The Ibis comes enthusiastically close to being a three-star hotel, able to provide the magical and quintessentially English aesthetics of a greasy spoon amalgamated with a lorry sleeper cab. The staff were polite, albeit a stage or two of evolution behind. I slept well in the cardboard-cut-out bed, despite a vicious SMS ‘difference of opinion’ with my ex-boyfriend that ran in to the early hours. The wide selection of sausages, egg, beans, bacon, egg, bacon, sausages and beans at breakfast filled me with a delightful sense of impending diarrhoea that lasted two days.
Using the bleeding edge of my cunning wit and planning skill, I booked a hotel that was just a 2 minute walk from the BMW dealership. Unfortunately, some kind of after-effect of the Japanese tsunami was hitting the coast, and the stylish garbs I sported that day demonstrated their absorptive qualities. Undeterred, as the proud holder of the full suite of swimming stripes, I was able to manage the 50 lengths to the dealership.
Walking through the doors of BMW the overwhelming nasal-burning concoction of the salesman’s favourites Lynx Africa, Brylcreem, CK One and Tetleys’ blew in to me like the tornado from the Wizard of Oz. I held on tightly as the pressure between the interior and exterior of the dealership equalised and things settled. I sauntered towards the used car manager’s throne, hoping he wouldn’t notice my approach, but the scent of cash was too strong and his senses too well honed - his ears perked and his beady eyes fixed themselves directly on my person. Twirling the throne towards me, fingers touching and a smile cracking, Mr Burns invited me over.
I was asked if I wanted something to drink. This was fortuitous as I had mistakenly not had a coffee – by this point it was after 9:00 AM, and therefore the chances of me suddenly dropping in to a coma in any one second was approaching 100%. I made my standard order of black with two sugars. I was quickly handed white with not enough sugar. I’m only moderately vengeful, and so managed to ignore the deep compulsion to immediately commence the beatings.
Long story short (lol right?), we walked through the documents and I signed on the dotted line. I became the owner of a 2007 E60 LCI BMW 535d M Sport. We briefly checked over the vehicle (the monsoon remained at full force) and I drove off in to the distance… in the direction Heathrow airport. The first few days for the car in my ownership would be spent in the short stay car park of Terminal 1. I did eventually come back, and in total I drove about 1,000 miles over the coming 5 days. The reason for why I have chosen a diesel should now be obvious, so I won’t go in to a detailed justification for choosing the 535d. Suffice to say, purchasing one was a carefully researched and planned action.
Before I continue, something worthy of note is that I once penned a very comprehensive review of the 530i. At over 5,000 words in length, I attempted to cover in detail every aspect of the car. I never completed it. I am typing this sentence now not quite sure if I’ll ever complete this one. The benefit of experience tells me that I should try to be a little more concise, but I enjoy something with a bit of length so this will likely inflate to a similar size. I’ll come back and type a note here with my post-completion thoughts.
Okay, yup, I completed this one. It took a while as I bored myself in to a daze writing parts of it. It will likely bore you in to a daze reading any of it. I tried to write a bit creatively, and think I may even have achieved it up to this point, but I can assure you the remainder is pretty dull.
Engine
The jewel in the crown of the 535d, the aspect of the car that attracts most acclaim, is the powerplant. It certainly is fantastic on paper - producing 286 HP and 580 Nm of torque, the output is truly exceptional for a 3.0 L diesel engine. Despite being 4 years old, if it were released today it would still lead the six cylinder class – Mercedes and Audi only have eight, ten or twelve cylinder engines more powerful, with nobody else even getting a look in. I may also have had mine ‘looked at’. Many vehicles tested after a ‘looking at’ produce around 350 HP and 700 Nm. Standard performance numbers are 0-60 MPH in 6.2s (including a 0.4 second shift to 3rd – it tops out at 58 MPH in 2nd) on to an electronically limited top speed of 155 MPH, ‘looked at’ numbers are expected to be low/mid 5 seconds to 60 and a top speed of 170+.
One of the typical complaints with diesel engines is the irritatingly short power band and repetitive surge, die, surge, die power delivery. A large powerband is made possible by this engine because of clever tuning and, most significantly, a sequential turbo arrangement. A small turbo spools with very little effort from virtually idle and a larger turbo begins operating soon after. This helps minimise lag and lower the RPM required for good power, whilst also providing the necessary boost at high RPM for the peak output. The engine starts to shove shortly after idle, plentifully by 1500 RPM, and carries on producing good power well beyond 4000 RPM, unusually so for a diesel, but these engines are known for it. The pre-LCI 535d would usefully rev to 5000 RPM, but mine stops at 4750. This is mildly disappointing as I wanted to go around blabbing that I have a diesel that revs to ‘5000 RPM or more’.
A common issue with highly-boosted turbocharged engines in general is turbo lag. In absolute terms there is probably a little more lag with the 535d than I thought there would be, but I am learning to manage this by more gradually applying the throttle rather than treating it like a digital switch. Flooring it is fun on occasion, as the enormous surging wave of torque being pushed in to the ZF 6HP28 transmission (shared with the Bentley Continental) has an addictive quality, but for day-to-day use you want to avoid it. I have learnt to adjust the point at which I apply power when, for example, leaving a corner to be just before when I would do so with a normally aspirated engine. With some adjustments like this you can work around the lag the majority of the time. It would be nice not to have to, but it’s an aspect of the compromise that is the 535d, and not a terrible one.
Fortunately, the lack of precision and urgency in the turbo power delivery is made up for by the sheer volume of it, allowing absolutely effortless acceleration in any gear. Once you have moved from a cruise in to acceleration, the lag between little and full acceleration is very slight. It seems once the turbos have a bit of a spin on it’s much easier to bring them up to full steam.
The engine in the 535d is refined… for a diesel engine. A petrol BMW six cylinder from the 70s makes it look like something best mated to a combine harvester. At idle there is a noticeable diesel clatter that permeates the cabin and the vibrations in the steering wheel and seat are not ignorable if you’re used to a good petrol motor. At low engine and road speeds the diesel din is perhaps more prevalent, but as engine and road speeds rise it becomes harder and harder to notice. At much more than 3000 RPM it even starts to sound remotely good, with the aural sensation of a straight six arrangement, the induction noise and the clatter at high frequency even becoming a little bit enjoyable. At a cruise things are generally quiet enough for the fact you are using farmer’s fuel to not make many odds.
The engine is certainly no sensory orgasm or epitome of refinement, but it’s acceptable for an executive car. People who say they can’t tell their cars are diesels are either lying, they lost all of their senses in tragic accident, or they only drive at exactly 50 MPH… everywhere. Diesel has moved on leaps and bounds but petrol remains the noticeably nicer experience.
Despite the tremendous performance and size of the car it returns very respectable economy numbers. I have been driving a very unusual set of roads and distances lately so have avoided taking an overall measurement, but some measuring of journeys to and from work (60 miles M25 each way) have seen anywhere from 36 MPG for a hideously busy morning journey to 48 MPG for a clear evening drive home. I am expecting it to settle somewhere around 40 MPG for my day-to-day use. If you drove steadily I think on a long trip it could top 50 MPG.
Something odd that has recently happened is a DPF regeneration cycle. Being my first diesel car I’ve never really experienced what these are like, but I can confirm while not hugely intrusive, it’s noticeable. The car leaves itself about a gear lower than it would normally be, trying to cruise at around 2000 RPM instead of 1500 RPM or less. It also seems to repeatedly pump a blob of fuel in when driving steadily, so you get this weird stop-go-stop-go sensation as you cruise along. The car is essentially trying to maintain very high exhaust gas temperatures to burn off the crap collected in the filter. Fortunately it only lasts a few minutes and shouldn’t happen all that often. A once a month, at most, kinda thing.
Transmission
The transmission in the LCI 535d is an interesting thing. BMW had no means and reasonable desire to provide a manual option, and so they are all fitted with a modern electronically-controlled torque converter based automatic, released by ZF just in time for the facelift. The transmission is a 6-speeder offering fuel economy virtually the same as the manual, performance virtually the same as a manual and, sometimes unfortunately, a drive virtually the same as a manual. The transmission has a very annoying desire to change up and down to ensure it’s in the absolute ‘best’ gear, with ‘best’ measured in MPG. This does not always equate for the ‘best’ gear for the most enjoyable drive for the discerning automatic user. The shifting quality is high and mostly silky smooth, but there is the occasional and uneasy sensation of taking a sudden deep breath that I have come to know and expect from automatic transmissions with manual aspirations.
The ZF 6PH28 is able to lock the torque converter from 1000 RPM in 1st gear, though BMW have not programmed it to do so. However, it does engage at quite a low speed, and so accelerating gently from a speed bump has sometimes resulted in it deciding to unlock/lock the transmission in concert with a gear change, accompanied by a fairly bad jolt and an uncontrolled changing of the vehicle speed as the resistances in the drivetrain change due to the downshift. All in all that is very annoying. I would have preferred no lock until 40 MPH or more – if I am wandering around town the very reason I am doing so in an automatic is to provide a smoother drive. I am not too concerned if I only average 25 MPG instead of 30 MPG over the 2 miles I am travelling.
I have learnt to adapt to the above by effectively allowing a second or so for the engine and transmission to get back in sync with the wheels before re-accelerating. This is not as irritating as it sounds as it only happens when you are cruising very casually/slowly at 25 MPH or less, and so there is no urgency required with maximum smoothness the goal.
As a comparison, the 530i drove much better around town due to the willingness of the transmission to slip the torque converter. The lack of low-speed lock provided a very smooth and gradual acceleration and deceleration at low speed, a style more suited to an executive car (especially one with an original invoice price in the region of £50,000). I am thinking about registering the jolt as a ‘fault’ with BMW and seeing if I can have the transmission software updated in the hope that they made some tweaks over the years that may improve matters.
Despite the issues at low speed the transmission truly shines on the open road, with the converter lock providing for a more enjoyable (and economical) manual-esque experience during cruising and acceleration. My 535d is also fitted with the optional 2TB ‘Sports automatic transmission’, which provides steering wheel shift paddles and a ‘Sport’ button that modifies shifting times, accelerator pedal response and steering response (the vehicle is fitted with Servotronic, which varies the steering assistance based on vehicle speed, so I suspect it tweaks a control variable in this system). A press of the ‘Sport’ button significantly changes how easy it is to get the 535d to pull up its skirt, and it pulls it up pretty high for a car of this class.
The adjustments made in ‘Sport’ mode serve to ensure that even the lightest of pedal movements have you rocketing towards the 4750 RPM ‘redline’ with maximum vigour. In fact, the pedal becomes so sensitive, I have found myself sometimes being completely unable to balance it, resulting in a kangarooing sensation as the car rapidly pulsates between off acceleration and full-bore assault. This is possibly more me than the car, but I like blaming others. UPDATE: As I re-read through this I can confirm I have figured this one out and yup, it was me. I’ve not had this for a long time.
The steering response doesn’t so much become sharper as heavier, but the shifting time becomes astoundingly quick for a transmission of this nature. It is fast enough that it feels as if there’s almost no delay between the gears, with only the rev counter giving away you’re running on a different cog. It’s not as fast as many of the dual-clutch manual-based transmissions out there, but the shifts are said to be around the accepted level of human perception (200ms). It sounds unlikely so I will try to get some videos of the gear change ‘in action’. You can literally be driving with the cruise control on at 70 and flick from 6th to 5th to 4th and back almost instantly without a jolt (the cruise control remains active during manual shifts). I think the total shift time on the Nissan GT-R is around 200ms.
To complicate the transmission modes further, not only is there a ‘Sport’ mode, there’s a ‘Sport’ mode. Yup, there are two independent ‘Sport’ modes that can be used alone or in combination with each other. BMW have obviously decided that they have used ‘Sport’ so much it has no meaning anymore, but can’t be bothered to invent another term so are just using ‘Sport Sport’. Nice.
To go through the options, I can be in D and engage ‘Sport’ mode via the button and this hastes up everything as described above. I can engage manual shifting in D mode, too, though if you select a gear and stay at a constant speed it will switch back to D. Then there’s DS mode, activated by clicking the shifter left a notch. This activates a sports shifting pattern and when manual mode is engaged from DS it will never flick back to DS, only upshifting and downshifting when absolutely necessary to prevent stalling/limiter hitting. I can be in D, D w/ ‘Sport’, DS, DS w/ ‘Sport’, D M (manual), D M w/ ‘Sport’, DS M, DS M w/ ‘Sport’. I hope the transmission software update adds even more modes to the list of eight I’m mostly not going to use.
I spend most of my time driving in D or D M, using the manual shifting if I am spying a gap and want to be sure of no delay in power. On occasion I also use D w/ ‘Sport’, say if I am at traffic lights on a roundabout and need to quickly change lanes. It will happily rev to 3000+ RPM before considering a change allowing you to nip ahead of pretty much anything. That may seem a bold claim, but the acceleration in 1st is exceptionally rapid. They have not completely geared 1st gear down in the 535d, so you essentially have a very short launch gear that tops out at 33 MPH, with the following three gears laid out like a close short-ratio transmission. The peak torque going to the wheels in 1st, per ton, is around 4,500 Nm. Some 1st gear torque/ton food for thought:
E92 M3: 3,815 Nm/ton
E60 M5: 4,100 Nm/ton
E46 330i: 2,500 Nm/ton
That first 30 MPH does not take long.
Chassis
There’s no way to hide from the fact that the 535d is a big and heavy car. Although, at 4.84 metres long and weighing in at 1660 Kg sans driver, it’s actually a little lighter than one would expect. Prior to EffecientDynamics (BMW’s economy-boosting scheme introduced in 2007 that the 535d also benefits from), the purveyor of propeller-badged automobiles was using lightweight materials to maintain class-leading levels of economy in large cars. This resulted in the E60 being blessed with an aluminium front-end that not only improves economy, but also performance and handling. In combination with a diesel engine sporting an aluminium block and head, this means the LCI E60 535d doesn’t suffer all too much from a heavy nose, allowing it to respond to a change in direction reasonably quickly.
The 535d comes in two main trim levels – ‘SE’ and ‘M Sport’. Aside from aesthetic differences, there are also handling modifications. Mine being of the ‘M Sport’ variety means that it is firmer than normal, but not so hard that it’s harsh. BMW have done a good job, once again, of getting the sport suspension right. Complemented by strong anti-roll properties, the overall experience is solid enough that it’s able to usher itself along a B-road with decent composure and very respectable pace. Only the very tightest of bends force you to slow down to a crawl, but that was the same in my lighter 530i, and my lighter still 330i. If you want to scrape around narrow hairpin bends you don’t generally decide to do it in an automatic diesel executive car, so I can’t really fault it for that. Overall the drive is typically BMW – well balanced, communicative and very enjoyable. The coveted 50 : 50 weight distribution is almost perfectly maintained, with BMW managing 52.5 : 47.5 here.
My 535d is fitted with the optional 19 inch style 172M wheels. Wheels of this size would not be my preference because of the adverse effect on ride quality, but there’s a quirk with the E60 in that the 19 inch wheels do not come fitted with run flat tyres. This means the ride on the 19s is actually better or equal to when it’s on run-flat 17s and 18s, with the added benefit of a wider selection of cheaper tyres to choose from come replacement time. The quality of the ride is ‘good’ – not ‘great’, as its quite firm meaning the little undulations and variations in the road are all communicated, but I would have bought a Mercedes-Benz if a cossetting ride meant that much to me. It’s certainly more than adequately comfortable and I think nicer than the E39 with 18 inch wheels. Passengers have commented to that effect.
Absolute grip levels are, as you’d expect, high. With 245 35 19 tyres at the front and wide 275 30 19 tyres at the rear, you can carry a lot of pace through bends and it takes a lot to provoke wheel slip in the dry. It’s currently wearing a set of nearly-new Continental Sport Contact 2s and I am finding these adequate in the dry and wet. There is good feedback but there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to sticking power. I expect when I replace these with either Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2s or Michelin Pilot Super Sports things will be cranked up a notch.
The one area of performance where the 535d feels a little lacklustre when driving is the brakes. Despite being powerful with discs measuring 348mm at the front and 345mm at the rear, it never really feels like it’s stopping you. I think this sensation is caused by a few things. Firstly, the level of refinement means you don’t appreciate how fast you are going when you start to slow. Secondly, the firm suspension with anti-diving properties means you don’t get much of that satisfying nose dive when you drop anchor. Thirdly, it’s a big heavy car that’s perhaps a little under-braked and it takes a while to stop. Fourthly, and potentially most importantly, I am used to stopping on tyres that are at the pinnacle of performance if you exclude ones inspired by the track. I am probably going to refrain from labelling this a weak point until I am running on tyres that benchmark higher.
Interior
The interior of the LCI E60 is a very nice place to be. Great improvements were made during the facelift to the build quality and the design, and I, personally, think the LCI is worlds apart, and to the extent that I don’t really like the interior design of the pre-LCI E60. The doors are all wrong.
The E60 had a tough act to follow in terms of construction and finish quality attempting to succeed the E39, but it’s all very good. I am finding it hard to find the E60 much worse than the E39, but also difficult to find it much better. It’s very much the same with maybe a few tiny things that aren’t as good, which is potentially somewhat of a disappointment considering my E60 is 7 years newer than my E39. However, I knew the E60 was no great leap ahead in this area, and so it pretty much met my expectations. An example of where things have slipped is the gaiter on the steering column. Previously matching leather (or at least faux leather), it is now a weird skanky felt dirt magnet. Another is the steering wheel plastic itself – mine has a small piece of plastic peeling (?!), but fortunately I already have the replacement part that I just need to fit. The E39 at 191,000 miles did not have peeling plastics.
The E60 is nicely put together and appears pretty much rattle free. However, there is a rattle coming from inside the armrest, where the mobile phone cradle fits in to the phone harness. Both of these are made from a dreadfully poor quality plastic, the sort of tacky rattly plastic from years gone by that one would be forgiven for thinking was extinct. I’ve poked and prodded it to see if I could figure out exactly where it was coming from so I can shove a bit of tissue paper or something in to stop it, but no luck yet. Fox reported a rattle from the rear parcel shelf, but he was in the back, we were at low speed, on rough roads, and the audio was off. I’m not often driving from the rear or with the music off, so I honestly haven’t noticed it. I have a couple of things always in the boot so I’d probably think the odd knock was one of them anyway. Though, I ventured underneath the boot floor the other day, and the spare wheel wasn’t fixed in to place – it was loose and able to jump about, so I screwed it down. The ‘parcel shelf’ rattle could have been this I suppose. I didn’t hear it originally to be able to say for sure.
The seats in the 535d are of the standard semi-electric sports variety, upholstered in cream beige ‘Dakota’ leather. The cream is very pretty and contrasts nicely with the deep blue exterior. The seats are well padded and supportive, and the car still has a nice leather smell to it. There’s tilt, for/aft, height, backrest angle and thigh support adjustment. That’s nothing exceptional, but enough to find a comfortable position.
The interior is mostly trimmed with wood, but there are the odd metal contrasts such as the surround for the leather transmission gaiter or part of the iDrive control wheel. The cream and wood come together to give the interior a real air of luxury. The colour combination is one of the things that really makes the car.
Equipment
The 535d comes with a fairly decent level of specification as standard, but there are a few ‘must have’ options that fortunately mine was specified with, plus a few other niceties, though it’s not all a pretty picture.
I’ll start with as must have, the Media package, which includes Professional navigation, Bluetooth and voice control. Professional navigation adds a larger 8.8” screen among other bits and the Bluetooth allows very neat and easy integration of a mobile phone, with all of your contacts synchronising with the iDrive computer and becoming quickly selectable using the iDrive wheel. The voice control is a bit of a gimmick. It works, and recognises my voice, but using it for almost anything is much slower than just whirring the iDrive wheel a bit.
One issue with the navigation system is that it doesn’t have full postcode entry – only AA11 1 level. It’s a bit lame considering TomTom has had full postcode since forever. It means I have to Google wherever I am going on my phone to get the road name. Not a showstopper, but meh. Silly decision BMW. Otherwise, Pro nav is very nice. Having your navigation and mapping system fully integrated in the car, always on, always with a signal, is such a boon.
Something I like in a car is a good audio system. Unfortunately, my 535d wasn’t specified with any optional audio, whether that be amplifiers, speakers, USB connectors or anything. I was too impatient to wait for one to come up that did, so I am pretty much stuck with the basic audio. Thank the Lord that BMW saw fit to install something remotely acceptable as standard, rather than repeating their shameful efforts in the E39. Hoping to listen to music in the E39 was roughly equivalent to holding a shell from the beach to your ear and hoping to hear the sea. The E60 is at least equivalent to a plastic cup and string. In all seriousness, BMW did a pretty decent job with the standard setup. The A-pillar and door speakers provide good tonal quality and there are speakers mounted in cabinet-like bins underneath the seats that drive a good deal of bass. If you turn the volume up loud you quickly approach the limits of these ‘subs’, but for normal listening volume there’s enough punch to make it seem like you are listening to a system of a much higher quality.
One option that I really really wish the car had is 6FL. For those who aren’t one of the lucky few people with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the BMW options list past and present, this is USB audio aka plug in a USB stick or an iPod and it will charge and put your songs on the iDrive. Without this the best the car has to offer is an MP3-compatible CD player. It’s possible to have 6FL retrofitted by BMW but it costs over £1000 at my local dealer. There are companies out there offering to do it for around £800. I am half tempted to slowly piece the bits of equipment together and then fit the damn thing myself. I’ve even started looking in to the coding of equipment to the car and that seems possible to do ‘at home’ now. It’s not that 6FL is unaffordable, I just begrudge paying a grand for what is essentially a single USB socket and the thing was only about £200 to specify when new. Alternatives include the Dension Gateway 500, but I am averse to non-OEM stuff. I’d like it to be cleanly integrated. We shall see.
Another absent option is DAB radio. I frequently listen to Gaydar radio (not because it’s gay, but because it’s about the best station in the UK for trashy dancey/housey/pop music) and this is a DAB-only station. It is not economically feasible to retrofit DAB radio ‘properly’, but it can be ‘pretty much’ retrofitted for about £900. Again, ludicrously expensive. I can’t think of any alternatives to this, short of connecting my phone to the car via the cradle (which enhances the signal by utilising the car’s antenna), connecting the 3.5mm out to the car’s 3.5mm AUX-in and then playing the radio over 3G. A total and utter bodge, of course, but free… sort of. I’d have to half-destroy the iPhone 4 -> BMW cradle to get it to work as it covers up the 3.5mm jack, so a £50 ‘upgrade’. Another ‘we shall see’. It depends how close I come to slitting my wrists listen to Kiss 100 play the same song 87 times in the hour.
There are only really two other infotainment items of note. First, the fact that the radio allows you to select a station by name based on what stations are available, rather than having to program them all in. It displays them in a sort of grid and allows you to just scroll through. I like it. Very useful for when you are driving somewhere and you aren’t aware of the frequencies of all the good channels. Second, the MP3-compatible CD player supports the display of MP3 tags – yay! Unfortunately, it seems to only support the display of the tag for the current track, making scanning impossible. Great. Sort of.. worthless, then? I’ve heard reports of iDrive displaying tags for all MP3s on a CD, so maybe I need some kind of update. What an oversight though, tbh. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to have it buffer the first song and then scan the rest of the CD for tags.
Something that I thought may be kind of neat is the Lane Departure Warning system. The car effectively has cameras that it uses to monitor the location of the lane markings on the road, and then if you cross over them without an indication you get a little buzz from the steering wheel. Excited, I first enabled this feature hoping it’d be one of those genuinely useful gadgets like rain sensors and auto lights. I was wrong. In minutes it had been turned off, after buzzing because I went around a parked car and then buzzing because I was using a little bit of the other lane along a B-road to get a better angle of attack. I’ve only since switched it on to demonstrate it. If you are the sort of person who doesn’t always want to indicate it will get annoying as it’s not ignorable. Maybe if I’m driving after not sleeping for 40 hours I’ll switch it on. Maybe.
A piece of equipment that I didn’t think I cared about was a sunroof. I was completely indifferent to the 535d having one, but now I’m a changed man. In the nice weather we had recently it was absolutely delightful to mooch around London with the sunroof back, or have it tilted up when nipping along some lanes. There’s virtually zero noise intrusion when it and the blind are closed so you don’t suffer when not using it. It’s no-where near as cool as a convertible, but I like to think it gives me a little taste of open-top motoring. A sunroof is something I will certainly be paying more attention to when buying in the future!
The final gadget I am going to talk about is the adaptive xenon headlights. Using various measurements from the car’s systems, the headlight beam dynamically and quickly adjusts its horizontal position as you move the steering wheel. It results in slightly better illumination of the road when you are at junctions but much better illumination of a bend along a lane. I wasn’t expecting much from this but I am impressed. It genuinely makes driving at night that bit clearer. The high and low beam xenon lights are pretty powerful anyway, and this feature makes it one of the best cars I’ve driven when it comes to lighting up the road ahead. While we are on the topic of lights, I’ll mention that the car also has the option to operate with Daytime Running Lights (DRLs), configurable via iDrive. When enabled, the car runs the ‘angel eye’ ring sidelights at a higher brightness all times the car is on and the headlights are off. I always drive with at least my sidelights on, so this is a nice feature for me.
Exterior
Looks are almost totally subjective, but I have always quite liked the aesthetics from this era of BMW design, especially if the car is sitting on good wheels and in an M Sport guise. The lines flow very well all the way from the peak of the headlights across the car off the edges of the boot. The car has a muscular stance thanks to the wide track and the appearance of a slightly risen and muscular rear, a favourite attribute of mine. Wide tyres and striking headlight clusters front and rear add to the menacing pose.
One of the aspects of the E60 design are the large panels. This means that a mark in the middle of one stands out like a sore thumb, and a mark in the middle of the driver’s door was one of the things my 535d sported. Before I collected the car BMW let Leatherface loose with a Porter Cable and the mark is gone. Unfortunately, Leatherface clearly has little restraint, and the car now has nine-dimensional paintwork that will take a £500 detail to rectify. I am lucky to have a very good detailer (Rob @ Gleammachine – check him out on Detailing World) down the road, and he thinks he can sort it all. When I get a moment and have recovered from buying the car I will let him work his magic and hopefully get better-than-new paintwork in return.
A welcome option on the car is the M rear spoiler. A tiny little bump, really, but it does set the rear off nicely and adds to the sporting look.
What isn’t welcome is the very low sitting front bumper. Hanging ludicrously close to the ground, I have already unwittingly smashed this down and scraped it along a kerb while leaving a driveway, resulting in the two fins either side of the bump being pretty beat up on the on the underside. This was so bound to happen I am glad it did early, as now I don’t have to pretty the car around everywhere for months on end before the eventual first scrape. I am by no means uncaring of the car’s appearance, but with the amount of driving I do I honestly cannot be bothered to delicately caress the car over every pothole or gently lower the car in an 18-point manoeuvre to leave every driveway. It’s a commuting car to be driven, not the car of my dreams to be loved. I will treat it respectfully but not mollycoddle it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think the 535d is a great car. A brilliant well-rounded ‘do it all’ that doesn’t cost a small fortune to run. Not perfect – far from it and chock full of compromises, but it offers a blend of performance, frugality, ride, handling, refinement and cost that is very hard to match if you are on the road a lot.
Over time I think I will forgive/work around the negatives and be generally very happy with the car. It’s fully BMW warranted, and I plan to keep it that way, so there should be no major bills heading in my direction. With a bit of luck my cost projections will be correct, and over the next few years it stands to cost me very little or even nothing more than the E39 530i A to run, future fuel prices depending.
If you are looking for a good used buy and have similar requirements, I can wholeheartedly recommend you take a look at the 535d.
Well, that’s pretty much it. A few OcUK members have been out in the car, namely Fox, NickXX and Matteh, though Fox only as I was buying the car and before any tweaks. I am sure NickXX will be along shortly to remind you I have no torque at the wheels, and Matteh will let you all know he’d have me in the twisties.
Thanks
Last edited:
