Shed Of The Week: BMW 5 Series Touring

Big diesel, big miles, and apparently only a couple of small problems...

After hitting a literal high last week with the majestic Rover Chairman (now only £800 folks!), Shed felt he needed to come back down to earth this week with an interesting example of that well-known bastion of middle-England respectability, the BMW E39 Touring.

Before we start, does anybody know why 'Touring' became the accepted word for an estate car? If you were a bit OCD and not really into cars but needing to buy one, you might be bamboozled into thinking that you had to buy a Touring for any sort of, well, tour. Which is clearly not the case. If we really needed to be told what cars were for, the streets would surely be littered with Hyundai Shoppings, Toyota Snoozings and Ford Arguings. And they're not.

Your man knows Shed criteria well

The last E39 Touring to be featured in this column (around four years ago) was discussed in less than glowing terms on the Smoker Barge thread. Phrases including 'poo' and 'worst car ever' were used. A bit strong perhaps, especially as the person using those particular terms was the vendor himself. Output Flange pithily noted that he 'wouldn't touch it with a double-wrapped, asbestos-lined stunt c*ck'.

Despite everything, that Touring (a 540i) sold on the same day that it appeared in SOTW. Today we have a 1999 530d Sport in green with what looks like black leather and a few bonus licks of white paint on the windows.

Although a well looked-after big-engined E39 can reward its owner with a quiet, smooth and overall truly fulfilling barge experience for a very long period of time, there's no getting away from the fact that things do go wrong.

5 Series Touring problems fall into three main categories: minor annoyances, potentially terminal nasties, and an interesting third category of head-scratching mysteries.

Add your dog/wardrobe/IKEA cliche here

In category one we have doors and window electrics, non-illuminating display pixels and bulbs in the dash, alternators, power steering pumps, radiators and hoses and loom trouble in the tailgate window/wiper area. The good news is that the E39 is a friendly car to work on and even OE parts are not as dear as you might think.

Coming under cat 2 are issues (for the Touring specifically) in the self-levelling airbag rear suspension and more generically the gearbox. They have a habit of dying at the 150K mark. If this is the original box, then it's doing well, but the seller does mention a judder in reverse. That could just be an oil top-up needed, but it could also be pointing to drum breakup, which would mean a one-way trip to the scrapper's.

Finally, cat 3, the famous '5 Series shimmy' which manifests itself as a steering wheel wobble between 50 and 60mph. Many weird and wonderful causes and solutions have been proffered over the years - including replacing bent rims, warped brake discs, duff upper and lower track control arms and wonky steering boxes - but nobody has ever really definitively pinned it down. It's one of the great mysteries of motoring. Last time Shed looked, the most popular move was to invest around £150 in a new set of anti-roll bar bushes and droplinks.

How many more miles are in it?

You may have noticed the gargantuan mileage on our Shed. This could explain the shortage of cabin shots: it's a fair bet that the moo on the driver's perch will look like an old turtle's neck.

For Shed, however, high mileage is a badge of honour and something to brag about, not something to be ashamed of. In his opinion, any car that's racked up over a quarter of a million miles now deserves to be kept alive for as long as possible just to see how far it will go.

The vendor is obviously of the same opinion, but not everyone will share that view. He says that 'everything' has been replaced, and with genuine parts too. It's always preferable to have those rather than the virtual ones some people try and fob you off with. Even though that old E39 Touring Shed sold on day one, the £1,000 asking price for this one sounds hopeful. Load your negotiating weapons, take aim and fire.

Here's the ad.

WE HAVE LOVED THIS CAR. It has had everything replaced on it over the years. We`ve had it for 7 years and looked after, regularly serviced , all genuine parts, MOT for 9 months, hasn`t been used since November last year. Has had a judder when in reverse and has done for years, it has driven me 25 miles to work for years, lots of kickdown with the automatic gearbox and great fun to drive. I did the scratch on the bonnet sadly.

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