pre-pickup day excitement+++

mrk said:
That's ok then :D

The civic got a good scratching and bashing recently by some unknown driver during one night and I just was not up for spending the £350~ on panel repair & respray so it's no longer the tidy motor I once had :(
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so instead you are paying over £300 for the next 2 months on top of your normal insurance?
personally i think this was a bad move, the car you have bought is freely available all the time, paying over £300 extra for another car wouldnt have been how i spent my money.

how much did you pay for the 318?
 
Morba said:
so instead you are paying over £300 for the next 2 months on top of your normal insurance?
personally i think this was a bad move, the car you have bought is freely available all the time, paying over £300 extra for another car wouldnt have been how i spent my money.

how much did you pay for the 318?
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so instead you are paying over £300 for the next 2 months
- No, £170 extra for the 2 months that are left on my policy (I get NCB every 9 months) - I guess my other posts wording could have been a bit clearer. It's only two months and after that the premium halves.

5350 for the 318 which includes

62k (mainly motorway miles)
full bmw s/h (the last stamp is of this dealer, the previous owner is local)
1 old owner from new (registered 2000)
12 months parts/labour warranty and valued increased from £500 to £1000
12 months tax
new mot
new full service
-
not a mark anywhere

The dealer only really deals with mercs and bmw mainly from around the local village so I'll probably service it there when service times come about.


Looking at how much I spend in general a month and how much this car will cost me to run and insure I have calculated it is a good decision to get it and I will have enough left to either save and/or use :)
 
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Very nice car, not everyone is obsessed with speed, and the interior of the BMW will be a very nice place to be. That engine is more that enough to get along fine on both the motorway and normal roads. All these people saying that 10 seconds 0 - 60 is slow have lived a very priviliged life. :P
 
I wont go into the issues of buying a 318 as they've been covered by other posters.

62k 'mainly motorway miles' though? I hope you've not been taken in by the dealer in this one. A 7 year old car with 62k on it does not immediatly suggest motorway miles - it's below average mileage which could suggest town miles instead. Not that this is neccesarily an issue. Check the service history, if it's been serviced more often than every 14k miles, it isn't a mostly motorway mile car.

That aside, it looks tidy.

Your modifications list, however, is..

a) Clear front and rear lights (Facelift rear lights will look great)
b) Colour coded handles and bump strips
c) Sport front and rear bumper
d) Decent alloys - MV2's suck, especially on an E46. Some MV1's perhaps, once you've got the Sport bumpers.

Then it'll look great.
 
Been in the car since this morning doing some extra cleaning and whatnot, It got dark quite early (well...) so will get better pics during the morning tomorrow after dropping the sister off to school :)

The head unit looks "fine" in the dash fyi! - (I'll put a discreet bmw sticker or something in the empty few inches on the right)

console.jpg


dials.jpg


exterior_corner.jpg


Also I now have driven it for an extended amount of time, it picks up speed very nicely, much quicker than the civic and even though it's bigger it has way more grunt, reaches 70 much faster than I expected.

I like the day/night sensing mirror and interior lights, a neat touch as well as the double headunit sized bays in the boot and the masses of lights inside the cabin (I counted 7 altogether!) - the dual zone climate is also very nice!

I took some family/relatives for a drive too in the time I had and they were quite surprised with the quietness but put the foot down and a nice noise comes out.

Defo the right buy IMO, 3-5 years of ownership will be pretty good with this.

Not many BMW cars of this age in this area so have to get used to people looking at traffic lights ¬_¬

Now to wait a few weeks before those lights can be swapped!

Petrol economy appears to be good too, just used under a quarter tank driving 70 miles (25 of which was 50+ mph)
 
mrk said:
The head unit looks "fine" in the dash fyi! - (I'll put a discreet bmw sticker or something in the empty few inches on the right)
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Well thats a matter of opinion, as IMO it looks totally out of place, in shape, location and style.

Glad your enjoying your purchase though :)
 
The style of alloys merlin has on is 330 look the best on the E46.

Personally im with paradigm, i cant see the logic in buying a 4 pot E46, theres plenty of decent barge type cars which will give a 4 pot bimmer experience.

Unless you got it uber cheap.
 
[TW]Fox said:
It looks fine, if you want out of place check out aftermarket stereos in E39's :(
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Care to post a pic? Can't see it looking much worse myself.

dirtydog said:
Looks fine to me - how should it look then?
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e46dash.jpg


Note how it follows the line of the dash, fits in with the CC controls, and is the same colour as the dash ;)
 
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dirtydog said:
What's wrong with it? It fills the hole, it's flush, it has the same red lights as the car.
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It just doesn't "go", and the blue/white of the display looks out of place. I'm sure not everyone feels the same, but I really like the E46 dash, and personally wouldn't ruin that look with aftermarked HU's.
 
Looks fine to me, and most others by the looks of it :p

You're just a picky apple :D

P.S the HU LCD display is actually black and white text, it looks blue because of the white balance and how a digital camera interprets it (the same way one interprets a TFT screens black as "bluey white"
 
paradigm said:
Probably! I REALLY love the E46, but when I get one (probably next car) I want to do it perfectly lol.
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I'm gonna spend my time with this one, I saw some horrid chav mobiles today on the drive home and vowed never to go that route!
 
I just found out something funky, if you hold the "lock" button on the keyfob during the night time the interior lights fade in and after 5 seconds fade out again! Also I found out that the interior lights maximise brightness during nighttime, looks like the interior day/night sensor works pretty well!
 
mrk said:
I just found out something funky, if you hold the "lock" button on the keyfob during the night time the interior lights fade in and after 5 seconds fade out again! Also I found out that the interior lights maximise brightness during nighttime, looks like the interior day/night sensor works pretty well!
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You don't need to hold the lock button, just press it. You can also hold down the unlock button after you've unlocked the car and it'll open the windows. Hold down the lock button to close them.
 
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