New breed of dodgy BMW driver

[Welly]

You know how some folk buy an old 3-series and then think they've 'made it' but haven't, quite? I keep seeing dodgy-looking types driving old X5's, usually a 51 reg or 02 so about 12 years old. Had a quick squint on AT and they can be had for about £4.5K so perfect for the "we've got a bit of money, well we haven't as we just bought this, but we want to look richer than you" brigade.

Sure enough it's the stereotypical ex-scooby driver type with his blinged-up heavily make-up'd missus pretending to lord it up over all us unfortunates.

Now surely a 12 year old very heavy X5 is going to be a maintenance disaster of catastrophic order? Aluminium sussy parts, bushes, then the drive train oily bits granted most of the 3.0d's would have a new engine after the first one ate itself but even so it's tragic to see this unfortunate end to cars life; it would stop me from buying a decent, newer, X5 (if I was so inclined which I'm not).

[Busman]

Chatting to a chap that I vaguely know in a car park the other day with his 4ish year old X5. He's had it for about 6 months and describes it as the worst car he's ever owned. Not least of the problems being it's ability to eat batteries. One of it's tricks was not letting him back in when he locked it. Queue a visit from the RAC, who said, ''they do this''
I'm wondering if the sheer complexity of modern vehicles makes this a likely scenario for most modern cars?

[Captain Jack]

I lump most of Germanic car drivers into the "you twat" lump...

[mjb]

I lump most of Germanic car drivers into the "you twat" lump...

You're welcome...


Posted from my BMW 540i using TapaTwat

[Captain Jack]

I lump most of Germanic car drivers into the "you twat" lump...

You're welcome...

I did say "most"

[DaiRees]

Posted from my BMW 540i using TapaTwat

[Welly]

I think we can safely exclude mjb from these stereotypes

Hell I drive a Volvo and look what people s.....oh wait

[mjb]

There's three kinds of people who buy BMWs:

1. Those who buy so they can flash the BMW keyfob around and boast (yes...) about how they paid £5000 for their last service. This is most BMW owners, although thankfully a lot of them prefer the Audi badge now, and explains why big bimmers with manual gearboxes are rare as rocking horse sh*t. This covers pretty much 100% of X-series, 1-series, and 3-series owners

2. Those who buy for a nice luxurious motorway barge (a step up from a pug 40x, 508) - 7-series owners and most 5-series

3. Those who buy for a bloody good driver's car... A rare breed, can typically be distinguished from the above by their use of indicators which contrary to popular belief, all BMWs are in fact fitted with

[Rolebama]

Some years ago my brother bought a 730. He was already a bit of a prat, but he really went for it with his 'new' car. That was until he took it for its MOT. The repairs estimate was more than he paid for the car. Luckily he had taken it in early, and managed to sell it to some unsuspecting twit who never even looked at the car before parting with his hard-earned and driving away.
I worked for a company some years ago that 'specialized' in BMWs. Only thing special was that services were priced at the model number times 100.

[Welly]

Oh yes the 1-series I think will be killed off by its own popularity, or the forthcoming Snow, whichever comes first.

[FarmerPug]

Id love an E38 7 series just because it was what james bond had , but a friend of my dad (the man who sold me the forester) had one and every time i heard about it there was something that needed to be fixed. Although didn't discopol have a 740 at some point and was happy enough with it?

A man i worked with 2 years ago had a 2006 X5 3.0d, it was an absolute dung ball, firstly a set of tires for the thing cost as much as fully restoring a knackered 406, but then it gave trouble with its air suspension, fuel pump, gearbox, and the boot release, before it even hit 100k miles. It wasn't even a nice car to sit in.

[MacWomble]

God I love my 406 !

[Bailes1992]

BMW do make good cars.
Even my Fathers 320d makes an awesome drivers car! The single turbo 16v 2.0 diesel unit makes power from 1400rpm right the way to 5,500rpm. There's petrols that struggle to do that!

But it's a shame that as they get older they get into the hands of people who want them for the badge and can't afford to look after them!

[steve_earwig]

Hopefully that one's later than the ones that don't eat part of their injection system and self-destruct...

There's a lot of that here,. so Goran in the spares shop tells me. Bimmers and Mercs mainly, they just must have these cars at all costs, then they come to him at service time and have a heart attack

[dirtydirtydiesel]

There's three kinds of people who buy BMWs:

1. Those who buy so they can flash the BMW keyfob around and boast (yes...) about how they paid £5000 for their last service. This is most BMW owners, although thankfully a lot of them prefer the Audi badge now, and explains why big bimmers with manual gearboxes are rare as rocking horse sh*t. This covers pretty much 100% of X-series, 1-series, and 3-series owners

2. Those who buy for a nice luxurious motorway barge (a step up from a pug 40x, 508) - 7-series owners and most 5-series

3. Those who buy for a bloody good driver's car... A rare breed, can typically be distinguished from the above by their use of indicators which contrary to popular belief, all BMWs are in fact fitted with

, I like to think I was No.3 mjb ,my 330 e46 coupe was the most rewarding, fun, well built car I have ever had the pleasure of owning
God I miss that car ( just park it from Dec-April )