Well, it's been a while - someone bought the silver 75 off me, so while planning a replacement I had a poke around a couple of E39s (520d and 530d), however I got offered a ZT-T for pennies as it was being scrapped.
I begged work for some time off, they approved it and as such I had 3 days to repair the 11 MOT failures, make it roadworthy after being sat for 9 months and get it looking reasonable.
This involved many suspension parts (142k so can't complain), new front discs and pads, rebuilding both front calipers (brake fluid was aincient, and had rusted the caliper pistons), replacing a bit of brake line and cleaning underneath up.
The reason I bought it was that it was reasonably well specced, had a lovely smooth engine and had a lot of work done in the past (namely a new clutch, DMF, slave and master 20,000 miles ago) and was generally quite clean.
Total spend £900 inc MOT and 6 months tax, sold the 75 for £700. Very happy with spending £200 and getting a 3 year newer car with full MOT and tax.
Since buying it, it's towed a Peugeot 406 for 80 miles, carried a bootload of spares home from the scrapyard, jump started a few cars and has generally been a useful tool.
Already had a tuning box fitted, and due to have a remap too. Goes well as it was a 135PS out of the box, now probably running about 150BHP at a reasonable guess from the bum-dyno.
Still to do:
In tank fuel pump needs swapping, grabbed one for a fiver from the yard. Needs a few paint imperfections touching up too, it's a little tatty towards the front end.
Some pics:
Projectors fitted - just need to fit the washer jets through the bumper: